


Saying Your Names

by FelicityGS



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Character Death, Food Porn, God Fic, M/M, Soulmate AU, alternate universe - bound gods, bound gods au, gods being gods, metaphors the whole way down, worship porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-12 21:31:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 40
Words: 38,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2125380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS/pseuds/FelicityGS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You are everything,” Thor says. “All of the souls who created us are, but you most especially. Without you, we have no Loki. Without Loki, change and entropy do not exist.”</p><p>Tony stares.</p><p>"I think I need another drink."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1 - Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seizure7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seizure7/gifts), [Verbyna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/gifts).



> [Saying Your Names](http://fel-as-in-tumbld.tumblr.com/post/53722954193/foxesonstilts-saying-your-names-richard-siken)
> 
> This is a soulmate AU with bound gods who also happen to be physical things. The story will do it's own job of explaining how the soulmates work, so hang in there. As we get to them, feel free to ask more and we'll clarify as we go, hmm?

I do not think  
we were meant to burn the world  
the way we did.

They always taught us  
that to destroy is to sin and that  
you will never be free once you have killed.

They misread human nature, my love.  
We have destroyed and it has  
made kings and queens of us.

We are stronger now  
we have sinned so mightily.  
(Eve ate the apple, that’s where this started.)

Hold me close against you,  
and strike the match.  
[Tear down the last gods.](http://fel-as-in-tumbld.tumblr.com/post/50567889808/fitzchivalrys-i-do-not-think-we-were-meant-to)

  
  


**PART 1**

**1.**

The gods gifted them with soulmates--one person (maybe more) in all of creation that would be the other half of a whole, would balance and uphold, would be what was _needed_ when the self crumbled.

They gifted them with traces of the first words they would pronounce on seeing each other or a flash of a gesture or a smell, gifted them with dozens upon dozens fickle signs that would not make a search easy but _recognition_ certain.

Tony Stark has to point that out pretty often.

***

The key is _need_ ; Tony figures when his parents die at twenty-one he likely doesn't _have_ a soulmate.

(He suspected before then, when he was kidnapped and his father refused to ransom him back. He'd never had any of the telltale signs of who his soul mate might be either.)

That was fine by Tony--soulmates were, in his estimation, frankly ridiculous. The idea of having to have someone to balance him out (the idea that anyone could) felt like an affront.

People did just fine on their own with the people who _weren't_ their soulmates; how could one person waltz in and change all that?

***

When Tony wakes up with metal lodged in his chest and is told to build weapons, he works on building out his own way.

(A quiet hope finally dies--capture by terrorists kept alive by a battery isn't need enough for the universe; Tony swallows the bitterness down and keeps working. He should have stopped holding onto that hope years ago.)

He gets himself out.

(He doesn't get Yinsen out, and he takes that with him instead as he staggers across the desert.)

***

There's a list of things he needs to do, but he isn't sure what it is when he gets back to air conditioning and hot showers other than stop _weapons manufacture_.

That goes over about as well as a lead balloon, but Tony doesn't care. It's the only thing he's sure of--this can't go on.

He needs to recreate himself, but he doesn't know how to do that either and instead starts to work on a second prototype of the suit that got him free. It's better than the news, better than speculation that Tony Stark's lack of a soul mate has finally driven him to the brink. It's there in everyone's eyes, but Tony is nothing if not good at ignoring the looks.

He's had practice.

_Who do you want to be?_

He doesn't know, only what he was-- _merchant of death_.

Not that.

***

He figures it out. Mostly. Vigilante justice isn't quite what he should probably be aiming for, but it's fixing things the way the government can't, and he can start to rewire the world the rest of the way. He builds most the world's tech and no one seems to be paying attention to that fact--starts adding back doors to back doors, stringing together a system that pulses through the world.

No one notices.

For now, all it is is a network in place. A security blanket wrapped around the world. He'll play nice.

***

There's Vanko and Hammer and palladium poisoning, a near self-destruction that almost destroys the relationships Tony does have, the ones he values more than any soulmate, and in the ruined aftermath he thinks this can't keep happening but he has no idea how to change it.

It's who he is.

He builds his way out of it--what he can at any rate. The relationship will take longer to build back up.

***

  
Tony's been building and engineering his way out of things for so long, it never occurred to him that maybe _he_ isn't the one who needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to both seizure7 and Verbyna for their delight with the previews I sent them. 
> 
> While not mentioned directly, this fic wouldn't exist if not for [wrecked-anon](http://wrecked-anon.tumblr.com/). She happened to reblog [two](http://www.asofterworld.com/clean/suspension.jpg) [things](http://wrecked-anon.tumblr.com/post/84056874285/loki-by-mr-zombie) that caught my brain on fire and next thing you know here we are. 
> 
> The entire fic is written and edited at this point; I'm planning to do a chapter every day I've got internet (which, with traveling, is uncertain sometimes).


	2. Part 1 - Chp 2

There are records, if a person knows where to look, of beings classified as superhuman--not mutants, like Xavier and Lehnsherr, but something _other_.

Stronger, to start with, and able to do things even more inexplicable than even the most powerful mutants. Things that don't seem to need food the way others do; tests suggest they consume essence, almost parasitically, off of human thought.

It's a theory.

They claim to be gods, the handful of times that anyone ever interacts with them.

Publicly, there's little more than rumour and speculation--which is good, because actual knowledge of them might cause more panic than the X-gene already does.

If Tony didn't have his hands directly on SHIELD records to the contrary, he wouldn't even believe they were real.

In 1972, the same year that SHIELD “took” the Tesseract from Howard, there was an incident reported as a comet to the public. In point of fact, it wasn’t a comet—it was a god crash landing with enough force that people believed the comet story. He was the first superhuman being that had been documented since the late ‘60s when someone claiming to be Thor surfaced briefly, half-destroyed a town in New Mexico, and left.

The god--referred to as L--babbled, constantly, hands tangling in both the air and anything that came in reach. He was unresponsive when spoken to but that didn’t seem to make him cause less damage. Figuring out a way to keep him from making people spontaneously freeze or catch fire was the first order of business. That, in turn, revealed that L’s babbling--which didn’t sound like anything in particular--was causing those who heard it to devolve into babbling the same nonsense.

When he started to pull himself together, things got _worse_.

There were a half-dozen escape attempts over the following three years that resulted in several suicides, L talking people into worshipping him, and a fire that burned down half the compound. Most of the records about those early tests were lost in the same fire.

It wasn’t quite locked up and key thrown away, but it was close.

***

SHIELD supposedly still has this god in custody.

They also have the Tesseract.

One of these technically belongs to Tony and getting the cube back is what he mostly wants to do; he doesn't like what it seems SHIELD is researching with it, doesn't like the way records aren't lining up inside the organization. Instead of take chances, he's just going to take back what's his.

But he's curious about the being they've held onto since they first 'borrowed' the cube from Howard, supposedly picked up not too long after it was uncovered. Other than records of having the being and various minor tests, it doesn't look like there's much else they've figured out in the intervening decades.

There is a note about failure to cooperate, over and over again. Whatever SHIELD--or the strange double he keeps coming across inside the organization--had planned for the being they picked up, it's been benched a long, long time.

Tony's curious. The Tesseract isn't stored so far from the supposed godling.

Why not?


	3. Part 1 - Chp 3

As ever, generous application of money and technology are all that's really needed to get what he wants; by the time SHIELD realizes that anything's changed, there won't be much they can do about it.  

It looks easy. _Too_ easy. His stomach knots and what sleep he gets is restless, bone-chilling; he wakes up with feeling like there's ice along his spine, in his blood, dreams forgotten but heart thundering and half-remember fragments that he can never recall enough to get a clear picture. Details he'd overlooked before suddenly become important--why did he think the pickup location was at all safe, why the hell did he not notice that agent's background, the camera in a hall entirely away from the planned route that he has no hooks in.

None of it should matter, but he changes it all anyway. It feels important, manic tinged by sleeplessness to avoid the dreams that keep coming, that try to edge into waking.

( _Ice. Ice and blue and green-green- **green**_.)

It _is_ important.

***

"You were right," Natasha says, flat.

Tony doesn't smirk. He can barely think, and what thoughts he has flit too too fast between each other.

"How right?" Tony asks, watching as she sets the case down. "Do you need a new job right? Is Fury aware?"

He hopes he wasn't that right about how far down the corruption at SHIELD goes--he's practically grown up with the organization and it's not _entirely_ bad. Mostly.

"He suspects," Natasha says. "I grabbed what I could."

"Excellent," Tony says, turning to the door. "Where's Barton?"

"Second backup route. There were complications." Tony turns to find Natasha watching him--she's aware of what he changed. "You knew that we would need it."

Tony's mouth is dry.

"I had a hunch," he says.

***

Tony has no idea how he knew what to change.

***

Natasha and Barton are soulmates--the platonic sort, the kind that need each other back and forth their entire lives. At the same time, they're the two best covert operatives in the world. Tony had approached them knowing that he could get them to help him so long as he presented them with the strange double records and dealings in SHIELD--the things that had him suspecting something rotten in the state of Rome.

He has no idea how he knew that, only that it needed to be them and that it worked.

(It needed to be Barton, and Tony doesn't think that that has anything to do with the Tesseract.)

***

He and Natasha are going over what she brought back and what he's found, trying to crack it open while Jarvis runs interference on the tracking that keeps trying to alert someone.

Neither of them think it's SHIELD--at least not Fury, and that raises even more questions.

They aren't making much progress when Jarvis interrupts to announce that Barton's made it. Tony nearly vomits, the hair on the back of his neck raising like the approach of a storm, missing a step as he begins to move for the garage. Natasha is looking at him strangely, but he ignores her.

He's _fine_.

(Nothing about this situation is _fine_ , but Tony doesn't know _why_.)

Barton's already out of his vehicle helping the other misbegotten gain out when Tony and Natasha arrive; bundled up in what looks like a blanket, so its not like Tony can see anything else. The air is thick and above all _cold_ \--like he's breathing inside of a freezer, and Tony's surprised that the air isn't clouding in front of his mouth the way his insides are already twisting up with the chill.

"Glad to see you finally--"

Green. _Green and green and **green**_.

He feels like _completion_ , the exhilaration of finding the elusive piece of a complex problem, the finishing touch of a new suit design. He feels, for one moment, _whole_.

Distantly, he registers Natasha and Barton both swearing, but more importantly (there is _nothing_ more important than _this_ ) he hears " _Yes_ ," a hiss of triumph that only makes Tony feel brighter, _more alive_ ; he doesn't remember closing the distance, doesn't remember moving, but then how could he _not_ , what would _possibly_ keep him away from--from--

_This_. Too thin hands and brilliant green eyes, swirling poisonous chemical green, a form barely held together into something like a man that Tony's hands wrap around like they've always known this half-shape, always known this-this--

" _Yes_ ," the god hisses again, fingers tracing Tony's face, and Tony grins, feral and triumphant and _whole_.


	4. Part 1 - Chp 4

"You didn't tell us he was your _soulmate_ ," Barton says, arms crossed over his chest and glaring at Tony.

"The fuck are you talking about?" Tony demands. His nerves feel roughshod, thoughts churning-- _where is he, what's going on, where-where-where_ \--and he can't stop pacing, _moving_ , agitated beyond belief ever since Natasha and Barton separated him and the maybe ( _is-is-is_ , _just like **Tony**_ a voice hisses in his head, and it sounds likes _yes_ ) god. He can't even clearly remember why or how they were separated, only that he can't stop shaking now and under the adrenaline is exhaustion.

"Sit down before your legs give out," Barton says and pushes Tony; Tony's surprised to find it’s enough force even though there's no way that should have knocked him overr. "You're going to crash soon, and while it'd be hilarious to watch you fall over, I'd rather not risk it now. Fuck."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Tony asks.

Barton studies him for a moment and Tony stares back. The rush is starting to ease, and he's both _starving_ and _exhausted_ underneath, can feel it like a river waiting to swallow him whole.

"Eat this," Barton says, pulling out a protein bar from one of his many pockets. "Don't talk, just eat it and I'll explain before you pass out on the couch."

Tony wants to protest, but he's already reaching for the food before he catches himself, and by then Barton's off to the races.

"I've been on both projects; you know that, I know that. You've read the files about him, name Loki--which _don't fucking just say it_ \--but I've actually seen how he works. That whole 'parasite' thing is accurate, and my bet is with you two being soulmates he didn't have to wait on the preliminary 'get you to believe in him' step that kept ruining agents before the project was benched."

"I don't _have_ a soulmate," Tony points out; Barton can't have been so far underground he doesn't know popular opinion. Then adds, "Where is he?"

"With Natasha," Barton says, wholly unsatisfying. "And you do; it's him. That couldn't have been more cliche soulmates' first meeting if it _tried_."

Tony realizes the protein bar is gone when he goes to take a bite of it to have an excuse to think. He's still hungry, but a little of the edge is gone and without it he can barely keep his eyes open.

"Get some sleep," Barton advises, shaking his head. "You're going to have a hangover headache when you wake."

***

It's deep, drool-worthy sleep, so far under he might as well be dead; for the first time since he started to plan the retrievals, he doesn't dream at all.

***

_Hangover headache_ Barton had said.

Tony can safely say that he has _never_ had a hangover this _awful_. Every beat of his pulse rattles his entire skull, his mouth is so dry it could give the Gobi desert a run for its money, and someone has to be taking an ice pick and poking his brain to see how it ticks. Worse is the ghosting nauseous pain like white noise that keeps sweeping through; at least the sharp pain can be ignored a little, is localized, but the other sort is just destroying any sense of balance he might have.

He risks cracking his eyes open. It is, by some miracle, dark in the room, there’s a puddle of drool beneath his face on the couch pillow he doesn’t remember falling asleep on, and there’s a dim reflection off a few bottles of water and Gatorade with some food on the coffee table.

He skips the food in favour of fluid--he’s not sure he could hold down anything else anyway--and he’s ready to swear that water has never tasted so sweet, not even after he got hauled out of the desert. He closes his eyes as he drinks, ignoring the fact he’s probably going to make himself sick by just chugging it all down.

When he finishes the first bottle off and opens his eyes, he meets green eyes and half jumps back on the couch. Which is terrible, because it jostles his head, which sets his headache off more, which makes him more nauseous, and he is _not_ throwing up all that water he just drank.

“Allow me,” the maybe ( _is_ hisses through Tony’s head, breaks like a wave through all of him, as certain as the sea) god says, half-contrite as he reaches with long-fingered hands for Tony’s head; Tony tries to jerk back, but it doesn’t do much good with the couch behind him and the way the rest of him is echoing with the _completeness_ he felt when he first laid eyes on him-- _Loki_.

Loki’s touch is cool, barely feels solid despite how clearly _thin_ and _real_ he looks now. Tony reaches up to grab his wrists, to push his hands away, because everything about this is _weird as hell_ and—

and his head stops hurting. It’s just… gone between blinks. Loki is sighing, thumbs rubbing over Tony’s cheek bones, green eyes drinking him in without regard for how obviously Tony is unsettled and staring back.

(It feels kind of nice--Loki’s hands on his face. _Right_.)

Loki looks a little less real again, paler somehow. And now that he’s not overwhelmed by his mere presence, Tony can actually look at him--black hair a long cascade and untangled at some point, a thin mouth with unfairly good looking lips, half-starved and fog-mist pale, but eyes so brilliant a green and aware that Tony is ready to swear the rest of Loki is just a shadow cast by them. Almost ready to swear; it sounds _absurd_ when he has the thought, and it jerks him back enough to lean away from Loki’s touch again.

Loki sighs and withdraws his hands, but he doesn’t stop looking at Tony; almost drinking him in the way that Tony drank down the water before.

(Tony ignores the _no, don’t—_ , the way his body tries to lean forward to follow Loki’s touch; _what the hell_.)

“What is your name?”

“Tony. Tony Stark.”

Loki sighs again, eyes closing and head tilting just slightly back like he’s savouring.

“Tony Stark,” Loki hums; it hits Tony low in the belly, lights a fire, leaves his mouth dry and suddenly starving. Makes him want to gather the pale thing up before him, to mark and kiss and just _hold on_ , keep him there. Loki says his name like an answered prayer, reverence cradling each syllable the way that Loki held his face only moments ago.

He feels small and vast and heady. He doesn’t even think, he just says, “Loki,” back.

Loki doesn’t open his eyes, not right away, but the corners of his lips curl up and his pale skin nearly _glows_ in the dark. He looks, somehow, just a touch more solid.

Then Loki opens his eyes ( _green_ ), tilts his head just slightly, and he’s gone.

Barton walks in a second later; Tony has no idea how Loki heard him, because _he_ sure as hell didn’t.

“You okay?” Barton asks.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Sure.”

***

Tony is not okay.

Tony is pretty sure that he’s going half-mad. He sees Loki in glimpses, always when he’s alone, and he isn’t sure he’s not imagining it except for how he had Jarvis confirm that Loki was, in fact, there.

The two agents have jointly decided that Loki shouldn’t be anywhere near Tony; Tony’s almost relieved, except for how he also feels so jittery and energized he wants to tear at his own skin just _thinking_ of Loki.

The fact that the feeling disappears when he’s with Loki does not reassure him in the slightest.

_Soulmates,_ Barton had said.

Fuck.


	5. Part 1 - Chp 5

“We should bring Rogers on board,” Natasha says in the silence.

Tony stares at the files they’ve finally managed to crack, at how deep the mess with with SHIELD goes.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “You can handle that.”

***

Steve Rogers, born July 4th, soulmates Peggy Carter and James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes. James died during the war. Steve went down under the ocean during WW2. Peggy moved on, founded SHIELD, and made herself a family.

The captain has been out of the ice for most of a year, and as far as Tony knows he’s been getting back on his feet with small time missions with Natasha and occasionally Barton. Tony’s never actually met him, though he’s seen him a few times, and he hasn’t exactly been rushing the process. The last thing he’s wanted to do is meet the man that his father thought he should be and Tony most definitely is not.

The thing is, Tony also isn’t going to argue with Natasha about having Steve help them with the apparent fusion of Hydra and SHIELD that runs all the way to the top of the organization.

And that before taking into account the Winter Soldier.

***

“What troubles you?” Loki asks; Tony doesn’t even jump with how much this has happened over the past week and a half. Tension drains out of his back as Loki touches him--Loki is always touching, greedy, and as he noses along the back of Tony’s neck Tony finds himself leaning back into him.

“What do you know about soulmates?” Tony asks, which isn’t what he wants to ask. He’s almost acclimated to the idea that Loki is his soulmate if only because as far as fairy tale stories of them go, Loki ticks every box for what Tony should be experiencing.

(Tension eased, turning to find him before he speaks, aware when he’s in a room, aware of _him_ without thought, touch a balm, voice more so. Maybe Tony didn’t get any of the other lead up, but he suspects that might have to do with the matching chain bracelets and choker Loki wears and itches at occasionally, which no one has pointed out. As if Tony won’t _notice_.)

“What truly troubles you,” Loki murmurs, lips brushing the shell of Tony’s ear. Tony shivers; Loki’s breath is warm, solid as the rest of him these days though Tony is sure he hasn’t eaten or drank anything.

“How are you just taking this all in stride?”

“You are _mine_. You were-are-will be mine. I had need,” Loki says simply. It makes Tony shiver again, but it’s cold and sweaty. Loki’s arms tighten around him. “This frightens you.” He sounds puzzled, _inhuman_ , and Tony thinks _god_.

“No,” Tony lies, because bravado and not admitting how terrified he is is a part of life. Loki goes utterly still at his back.

There’s a blur of motion, too fast for Tony to follow, then he’s up against a wall, back and shoulders screaming from the sudden impact, a hand around his throat. He blinks to try and clear his vision then nearly swallows his tongue--would, if not for the vice like grip around his throat, and he grips Loki’s hand, trying to pry it away.

Loki is _vast_ , shadows twisting behind him in a way that makes Tony’s head spin again, glacier blue tinging his joints and the air frozen around him; his hand burns with cold where it’s wrapped around Tony’s throat.

“You would _dare_ lie to me,” Loki snarls.

Tony makes a choking noise, because he can’t make much other noise at the moment, clawing at Loki’s wrist that has him hauled off the ground. His vision is black at the edges, lungs and face both burning as he tries to just find some _air_ \--

Loki drops him, just like that, human-sized and human-shaped, no trace of what just happened, hands steadying Tony as he gasps in breath and his feet his the ground.

“What the _fuck_ was that?” Tony demands as soon as he has enough air, shoving Loki’s hands away. Loki has the gall to look hurt, like he didn’t just nearly murder Tony.

“You lied,” Loki says, blinking at Tony, brow furrowing. Then he says, “You are upset.”

Tony just stares at Loki.

“I would never harm you,” Loki says, reaching for Tony again. Tony sidesteps it. Loki’s hands hang in the air for a moment, then he’s wringing them, staring at Tony like he can just will him to believe it. It’s almost _childlike_. “Not truly. I swear it, you are--you are _everything_.”

“You could have _killed me_ ,” Tony says slowly and clearly, making sure to enunciate.

“You are well and I did not. I would not. Never.”

Tony stares at him for a few long moments, but Loki really isn’t getting it.

“I need a drink,” he says, and walks out.


	6. Part 1 - Chp 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update, don't miss chapter 7 next~

“No one mentioned that he’s fucking _crazy_ ,” Tony says as soon as he sees Barton.

“What?”

“Lok—”

“ _Don’t say his name_ ,” Barton hisses, diving across the distance and clamping his hand on Tony’s mouth, and that’s it, Tony’s had it.

He shoves Barton; Barton quickly raises his hands up, backing away from Tony.

“Just… don’t, okay?”

“Why?” Tony demands.

“It gives him power.”

Tony stares. Barton rubs the back of his head and scuffs his foot a bit in the carpet.

“Look, I’m mostly deaf without my hearing aids. I got put on guard duty a lot when I was still a rookie. He feeds… it’s not in any of the records, okay? No one reads my reports. But he feeds off his name being said. Belief, I think, being made real. Every time he looked about ready to croak someone would come along and say his name, then no more looking like he was going to croak.” Barton sighs. “It sounds stupid.”

Tony remembers the way Loki’s eyes glaze with bliss when Tony says his name to him, how he looks more solid.

“Oh,” Tony says.

“He’s not really strong _now_ ,” Barton says. “But he could still wreck us if he wanted to, and he gets something off you just by you two being around. We’re just trying to… keep him contained. No offense.”

“None taken,” Tony says, rubbing his throat. He’s probably going to bruise--his windpipe feels that way. He heads for the bar he was actually going towards when he saw Barton.

“We didn’t think he had a soulmate. Explains why you knew all the things that were going to go wrong though--he wasn’t getting out without someone outside to do it.”

“Lucky me.”

“Lucky you.” Barton pauses. “Was he being weird again?”

Tony stops, turning to look at Barton. Really look at him. Barton says he got guard duty with him a lot, early on--Tony knew that, but he starts figuring out dates and realizes Barton has probably spent more time with Loki in the past few years than anyone else has.

“Define weird.”

“You know, weird.” Barton’s eyes narrow. “You didn’t lie to him about something did you?”

***

Over the next hour, Tony gets everything he can from Barton. He should probably feel bad about it, but considering that Loki shows no signs of going anywhere (Tony doesn’t particularly want him to, at least not on an animal comfort level) Tony would rather not risk getting killed.

Loki might have promised that he wouldn’t _actually_ hurt Tony but that doesn’t mean Tony has to believe him.

Of course _Tony’s_ soulmate would be stark (hah) raving mad.


	7. Part 1 - Chp 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update, make sure you saw chapter 6~~~

Natasha gets Steve on board. They have a meeting and everything--Barton, Tony, Natasha, Steve.

Tony, with great force of will, keeps his mouth shut and lets Natasha do most of the debriefing on what she and Tony have pieced together.

Tony is not surprised that what hooked Steve--more than a clear enemy and a possible purpose--was the Winter Soldier.

“How do we want to go about doing this?” Tony asks. Steve’s supposed to be a _great_ strategist.

(He’s not bitter ( _right_ ) and if this is a _team effort_ \--which it is--then they _need_ a great strategist.)

“Thorough,” Steve says. “If we don’t wipe them out in one shot, they’ll come back.”

“‘Cut off one head and three more shall take its place,’” Natasha echoes, entirely unnecessarily in Tony’s mind. But point made.

“We could start with Bucky,” Barton pipes up. “He probably knows more about how they operate, inside stuff, bases that wouldn’t be documented.”

Tony doesn’t point out he thinks that the chances of them being able to get the _Winter Soldier_ on their side is slim to none. Mostly because he’s sitting across from Captain America and he’d prefer not to get punched today.

“Possibly,” Natasha says--she’s so much more tactful than him.

“It’s a start,” Steve says, voice steel edged.

They were always going to start with Bucky.

***

Tony hasn’t seen Loki around in the two days since Loki slammed him against the wall and strangled him. As much as he’d like it to go _longer_ , his body and parts of his brain think that’s a _terrible_ idea.

Tony would very much like to know why the hell he got stuck with the most stereotypical of fairy tale soulmate bonds possible. Real, physical ache at not being around Loki is going to be a hell of a problem down the road.

He finds Loki in his workshop; it makes the hair rise on the back of his neck mostly because he’s not more pissed off about Loki rummaging through his workshop. Loki, for his part, doesn’t seem to be _touching_ anything since his hands clasped behind his back, but it still should be pissing him off.

Instead, it just looks… natural.

“What are you doing here?” Tony asks, ignoring that it doesn’t have half as much vehemence in it as it should.

Loki glances at him briefly, but his eyes quickly dart away from Tony. Tony crosses his arms and frowns at him, but Loki still isn’t looking at him. Tony doesn’t think it’s guilt about being caught where he shouldn’t be; Loki certainly hasn’t stopped roaming the workshop since Tony showed up.

“I wished to see you. You were occupied. You are here more than any other room in this house.”

“Okay. You’ve seen me.”

Tony does not admit he wanted to see Loki as well; encouraging Loki seems like a good way to get back into no personal space at all. Traitorously, part of him thinks that sounds _amazing_.

Loki’s face does this complex expression--a series of expressions, each so fast Tony can’t catch any of them, only a vague sense of the whole: _fear-distress-upset_.

“Wait, are _you_ frightened?” Tony asks.

The look Loki gives him could freeze a wildfire, and that just with his eyes--the rest of his face is utterly still. But he doesn’t say anything else--definitely not just flat out lie the way Tony did.

“ _Why_?” Tony asks. He moves closer to where Loki is standing; Loki watches, simultaneously looking like he might bolt and he doesn’t care at all. He also doesn’t answer the question.

Tony studies him; he looks, well… _better_. Still lean and whipcord, but his hair is sleek and neatly tied away from his face now and there aren’t dark circles beneath his eyes. While his cheekbones could probably still cut someone, he doesn’t look like he’s one missed meal away from starvation. In fact, Tony can’t remember the last time he saw Loki looking quite so half-illusion as he had those first few days.

He narrows his eyes at Loki hasn’t said anything, just waiting on Tony.

“As much as I’m sure you’d _love_ for me to put words in your mouth, I’m not going to,” Tony says pointedly, crossing his arms. He might have guesses, but that seems like a good way to risk more trouble with Loki--nothing Barton has told Tony suggest otherwise, either.

“An exchange then,” Loki says. When Tony raises an eyebrow, Loki adds, “What frightens you for what frightens me.”

It _sounds_ equal enough. Loki isn’t going to say anything otherwise, and Tony does actually want to know more about the god than what he got out of Barton.

“Deal.”

Loki smiles then, a brief quicksilver thing sharp as a knife.

“Don’t be creepy about it,” Tony says, pointing at him and scowling.

“I would never,” Loki says, appalled at the mere implication, eyebrows climbing. Tony believes that about as far as he could throw Loki without the suit; then again, Loki doesn’t seem a fan of lies and probably _doesn’t_ think he is being creepy. Dammit. Then, “I did ask you first.”

“And then you threw me against a wall,” Tony points out.

“Because you lied.”

“As a reason for me to go first, that isn’t convincing me.”

“What is the energy in your chest for?”

It takes Tony a second to realize what Loki is talking about, then he resists the urge to cover the light shining through his shirt. He gives a tense smile.

“Asking more questions won’t make me open up,” Tony says. “You haven’t even answered the first one.”

“You agreed to an exchange. You seem ill-inclined to follow through. I am merely seeing if there are any other fears you wish to trade.” Loki cocks his head to the side, analytic and inhuman. “Or are you an oathbreaker as well as a liar and killer? What else do I need know of this life of yours? How far have you fallen this time?”

Tony’s mouth goes dry.

“Who told you that I’m a killer?”

(Nevermind that it’s true--blood seeped into Tony’s hands he doesn’t know how to scrub out, doesn’t think he _can_.)

Loki just _looks_ at him.

“You’re really crap at being not weird,” Tony says, and if his voice shakes a little, that’s pretty understandable, all things considered.

“Your values change too quickly to bother with _normal_.” Loki sneers the word, tensing just briefly as he does, almost _vibrating_. “Shall you keep your deal or am I wasting what breath you have?”

“I didn’t even think I had a soulmate and here you are. You talk like I’ve always been your soulmate even though I’m pretty clearly human and you are whatever the hell you are. What am I supposed to think? What _isn’t_ terrifying about having you for my other half? Why the hell aren’t _you_ terrified of all this?”

Loki frowns as Tony speaks, a little dip appearing between his eyebrows.

“I forget,” Loki murmurs, “that you do not remember.”

“Remember _what_?” Tony asks. He rocks back on his heels as Loki pushes into his personal space, hands no longer clasped behind his back but reaching for Tony’s face. Tony quickly grabs Loki by the wrists though Loki’s much stronger than him; Loki allows Tony to stop him. “Remember what?”

“You are everything,” Loki says. “I do not say that lightly. You were the first and you shall be the last when all things end, when all is consumed and born anew. You will always be my first and my last, in all the cycles of this universe. _You are everything_.” Loki’s eyes search over Tony’s face, raw and open. “And I forget that you do not _remember_ , and so we must start again-- _again and again_. That no matter how tightly we are bound, _it is not memory_ , not for you.”

Loki twists his hands out of Tony’s grip, sliding them so that their fingers entwine. Tony can’t look away from Loki, the way Loki is studying the roughness of Tony’s hands next to his own.

“Without you, I am nothing,” Loki says. “I exist because of you and I will cease at the end of all things when you cease, and were you to ever… _ever_ —” Loki stops, bites his lip, then his features smooth to stillness again. He does not look up at Tony’s face.

Tony makes himself breathe and not break under the incomprehensible weight of time pooled in front of him.

“I am not as I was,” Loki murmurs. “Forgive me.”

“How about,” Tony says, once he’s swallowed around the dryness, “we try this again. Hi, my name’s Tony Stark, and I just helped break you out of somewhere I probably shouldn’t have.”

Loki smiles, looking up to meet Tony’s eyes.

“I am called Loki.”


	8. Part 1 - Chp 8

The problem is while they know he exists, they haven’t been able to figure out _where_ the Winter Soldier is at. Steve gets this set to his jaw which might be the most patriotic thing Tony’s ever seen, but it hasn’t made Bucky just _appear_ either. It’s not any easier with only Tony to sort through things when Natasha and Barton get sent on a mission together in Budapest.

Tony applauds Steve keeping his temper though; Tony sure as hell wouldn’t in his shoes.

***

Someone at SHIELD--well, Hydra--has noticed Steve snooping around on base, or his lack of on-boardness with the missions that SHIELD has been sending him on; Tony isn’t clear on the exact details. What he _does_ know is someone has _also_  realized Steve isn’t the only one snooping around and have decided to nip things in the bud.

Try to nip things in the bud.

Which hey, bonus, that means now Bucky’s _here_.

 _Unfortunately_ , it also means that Bucky is trying to kill them with a crew that Tony _sincerely_ hopes a few of the lurking paparazzi have caught, and that his house is definitely less house and more flaming wreck.

He can hear Steve and Bucky going at it, something about missions and he’s almost glad he can’t see whatever pained eagle look is on Steve’s face right now.

There are possibly too many agents with Bucky. Okay, there are too many of them. They need to get _out_.

“Steve!” he shouts, fully intending to relay this.

Fuck, they need to get the Tesseract out and these people absolutely _cannot_ be allowed to get their hands on Tony’s toys. Tony has other places he’s kept things stored (he’s not an idiot, just proud), so while this is going to be a loss it won’t be the worst.

“Jarvis, initiate protocol nineteen forty-five, authorization code zero six zero niner.”

“Five minutes, sir,” Jarvis says.

Tony just hopes they can make it out in five minutes.

He jets for the workshop, dodging around missiles--really--and shooting a few blasts back. Enough to get the heat off of him for a while, then he’s in the not supposed to be open-air workshop. He is, he admits, _pissed_. Half the workshop has slid into the ocean, including the bots, and he wishes he could stay and tear these people apart.

He gets tackled, hits the ground hard, dust and concrete shattering around him, fuck-fuck- _fuck_ — _the suit_ —

“ _What do you wish_?” Loki snarls from where he’s pinned Tony to the ground. Tony blinks the fuzz out of his head, and it’s not so much he resists pushing Loki off as he _can’t_. Loki’s eyes are wild, swamp fire, and the air around him looks almost like Tony needs to clean off the cameras, smudged and smoke and _blur_.

“What the _fuck_?” Tony snaps when he realizes he can’t push Loki off. “We’re in the middle of a crisis, in case you didn’t notice!” He has no time to deal with Loki and Loki’s _weird_ right now, and he gives another go at pushing Loki off.

Loki hisses, grabs Tony by the throat and keeps him pinned with his other hand.

“ _What_ ,” Loki growls, “do you _wish_?” He’s nearly spitting the words, face as close as it can be to Tony’s considering the faceplate. “ _Pray_.”

There’s a blast. Tony is ninety-nine percent certain that it just hit them both, everything goes blinding yellow-white hot, the noise is deafening. The suit, though, swings wildly between temperature readings and as he gets his vision back, he realizes Loki is still sitting on top of him, looking just a touch more _feral_ , eyes unmoved from where Tony’s are.

 _God_ Tony thinks, and deliriously his eyes take in the open neck of Loki’s shirt--the skin there is raw, burned and he can just make out the chain necklace crackling with… he isn’t sure, but he meets Loki’s eyes, feels the connection jolt through him.

“ _Pray_ ,” Loki says again, grip tightening.

Tony shouldn’t be able to hear him. He still can’t hear anything else through the ringing in his ears.

“Tesseract. Steve. Out.” Tony blinks, vision getting a little clearer. “Bucky. Please.”

It’s nothing, barely complete sentences, but the ideas are there. He wants _out_ , wants them _safe_ , wants out of this mess, and they’ll figure out what the hell to do with the brain-washed Bucky later, but it’s important that he comes too even if Tony can’t remember why; they need _out_.

Loki leans back and _laughs_.

Then he’s gone. There’s no immoveable weight holding Tony down. Tony sits up, notices scattered links falling off of him as he does so-- _chains_ , he thinks dully. Chains.

Tony pushes himself to his feet, aware that Jarvis is talking to him in his ear but still not quite able to hear anything. He staggers a bit--the suit is wrecked, no thanks to Loki, but it doesn’t have a single sign of the missile they took.

He tries to head for the Tesseract, but then Loki’s back--it’s the green eyes that give him away, the _laughter_ (Tony knows that laughter in his bones), but the rest, he can’t even _process_ the rest: scale, shadows, glacial green ice, teeth and claws, many heads and none, antlers branching towards the sky, flickerfast twist-shifting, _vast and vast and vaster_.

 _Beloved_ , it--Loki--purrs, wrapping around him, _close your eyes_.

Tony has a moment before there’s a jerk and he catches a brief glimpse of dark between the stars _endless and forev_ — before he closes his eyes tightly and tries not to vomit.

What the _fuck_  has he unleashed?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woooops~~~ 
> 
> (it's all downhill from here)


	9. Part 1 - Chp 9

Tony isn’t entirely sure where they are. Loki says _safe_ , but Tony’s lost contact with Jarvis, the stars aren’t any he knows, and there doesn’t appear to be any civilization… anywhere.

They are also on an island in _space_ , but his brain keeps shutting down when he tries to approach that thought. It’s just night, that’s all. He did _not_ see a ledge that just fell into space. Not at all.

This is good. They can regroup.

Could regroup, minus that issue with Bucky and Steve going at it. Tony’s been watching them since they got to this strange island, and while both were a bit startled, turns out Hydra programming is pretty great.

“Do you think they’ll get bored any time soon?” Tony asks Loki. He doesn’t look at Loki, doesn’t risk it--the last time he got an eyeful of him, Loki was still scaley, antlered, and wild, twisting so fast between forms that Tony’s shoved it right next to ‘floating island in space.’

“Are you?” Loki asks. Tony is fairly certain if he hadn’t specified he wanted them brought along that Loki wouldn’t have; Loki’s interest in _humans_ seems to extend as far as Barton and Tony then come to a grinding halt.

Tony isn’t sure about outside humanity.

“I’m going to sleep,” Tony says, then proceeds to roll over to do just that. The ground isn’t his favourite place to sleep, but considering some of the benders he’s gone on, it’s also not the _worst_ place either.

There’s quiet for a moment, then a thankfully human hand hesitantly touches his arm.

“Are you…”

Tony waits, but Loki never finishes the question. It hangs there for a few minutes, and Tony almost tells him to finish. Except then Loki is spooning against his back, nosing against nape of Tony’s neck, one arm wrapping around him. Loki’s body at least is distinctly more in the realm of what Tony’s used to, even if he feels miniscule against the vast _pressure_ Loki’s presence is without the chains that were limiting him before.

It’s… nice. Tucked up against Loki, nevermind Loki’s a part of why his brain was gibbering earlier, he feels safe.

“Is this…?”

Loki’s being _delicate_. He knows—

“Yeah,” Tony says and relaxes into the embrace.

***

When Tony wakes, it’s quiet. He’s not too warm or too cold, he doesn’t feel horribly stiff despite sleeping on the ground, and he almost wants to just keep dozing to the soft beat of the heart under his cheek. All’s well.

Then he remembers what’s happened and jerks upright so hard that he’s probably strained something.

Loki snorts where he’s laying on his back--apparently he’s not so bad as a pillow despite the lanky frame he prefers, good to know--blinking awake to look at Tony with a brow raised. Tony spends a minute just staring at him. The green of his eyes, the soft morning flush to across his cheekbones, the way his hair is mussed around his face and lips half-parted.

He’s beautiful.

“What is it?” Loki asks first; there’s a slightly higher colour in his cheeks, and Tony doesn’t want to say he’s blushing--Loki doesn’t seem the sort to blush--except he kind of is.

“Where are the duo?”

Loki waves a hand.

“They woke me up.”

Tony stares and hopes this does not mean Loki pushed them off the island they’re on. Loki smiles, sly and pleased, like he sees the thought, before laughing.

“I did not kill them, I promise,” Loki says. “I thought that might upset you. I only set them at opposite ends of our haven. I can bring them back.”

“You do that.”

It takes a few minutes--mostly because Loki insists on stretching in almost pornographic ways to finish waking up, and Tony is _not_ staring.

Except he kind of is; he’s only human, as he is so often reminded around Loki. The glimpses of Loki’s stomach with a wisp of treasure trail and the arch of Loki’s spine would make saints reconsider their vows--Loki _looks_ like a god. There’s something innately _sexual_ to him that has Tony’s blood racing more often than not. The stretching sets it in the foreground, but Tony’s been picking up on it since they first met--the flush and slick of Loki’s lips when he bites them, the colour that comes to his skin so readily, the way his eyes tend more towards half-mast and smoldering intensity. It has a resonance like the green of his eyes, the cold that haunts his shadow, and the mirth that touches his lips when teasing.

It’s not that they’re soulmates--it’s that this is simply _Loki_.

Tony realizes Loki is watching him, a half-smile on his face, and quickly coughs to break the accidental gaze. There’s a touch of amusement in Loki’s eyes, but more awkward for Tony is the underlying _adoration_ beneath; he has no idea what to do with that, only files it away as more insurance that yeah, Loki’s got it just as bad as him.

Maybe _worse_ ; Loki, after all, can remember everything while all Tony has is the past few weeks.

“Who shall we retrieve first?” Loki asks, allowing Tony to recover the scraps of his dignity he can find.

“Let’s start with Steve,” Tony says.

***

“And you _didn’t think_ to _tell me_ that you have a… _possibly god_ in your home?”

Tony’s wonders if maybe they shouldn’t have started with Bucky.

“It didn’t seem important,” Tony says. “I mean. It wasn’t.”

Steve crosses his arms.

He looks _rough_. Super serum recovery rate or no, there’s still dried blood across his broken nose, various burns, and what’s probably a knife wound that thankfully isn’t leaking all over everything. His eyes are the worst--blue and clear, but haunted and unhappy with dark rings underneath.  

“Look, if he _hadn’t_ been there we’d probably all be dead. _Including_ Bucky.” That gets Steve to wince a bit; Tony feels like he’s just kicked a puppy while it’s down. “Loki, could you heal him or anything?”

“No,” Loki says calmly. It’s not dismissive, so he’s at least _pretending_ to care. There’s a pause, then he says in a way that makes Tony’s stomach clench, “I could return his memories, if you’d like.”

Steve and Tony are both staring at him now. Loki raises an eyebrow.

“It would be better than all this senseless violence,” Loki adds. “It’s rather tiresome, and I would like a return to sense-ful violence as soon as possible.” He smiles like a dagger--Tony remembers that a crew of people just destroyed his house and tried to kill him.

“What’s the catch?” Steve asks before Tony can.

Loki blinks at them with wide eyes.

“ _Catch_?” he says. “Why would there be a _catch_?”

***

The catch is simple--Loki goes to Bucky alone. No audience.

“Do you trust him?” Steve asks Tony as soon as Loki vanishes.

“Why didn’t you ask me that _before_?” Tony asks. “Also, he’s my soulmate.”

Steve snorts.

“That doesn’t mean you trust him.”

And okay, fair point. It seems way too convenient for Bucky to already be out of everyone’s reach except for Loki’s. Loki doesn’t even like people and Bucky was definitely on that list of people who just tried to kill Tony and helped destroy his house. Tony remembers what happened to the people who Loki took an interest in while captive.

So no, Tony doesn’t trust Loki on this. Loki doesn’t give Tony the vibes of altruistic divinity, the kind of god that just gives things away.

If Loki’s offering, there’s a really good chance there’s a price tag--even if he’s not admitting to it.

“He doesn’t lie,” Tony offers at last. “If he says he can give Bucky his memories back, then he can.”

“You sure?”

Tony remembers the hand around his throat and fury in Loki’s eyes.

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

***

“You will wear a hole through the ground,” Loki says, stepping out from the shadow beneath a tree. Tony flips him off before he stops pacing, noticing Bucky not a few steps behind.

If Steve looks rough, Bucky looks worse. Tony wants it to be the smudged racoon paint even though there’s no way it could be. He’s been crying and looks like he can barely stand on his feet.

He also is refusing to look up, already stepping back when Steve steps forward.

Loki smiles, sharp and brilliant as Steve looks at him.

“Isn’t this _wonderful_?” Loki asks, glee dancing in his voice. “I have helped James recover his memories with minimal fuss. Where shall we go next? You two have discussed this, yes?”

“Lay low or locate the spy duo,” Tony says. “We aren’t sure.”

“I know a guy,” Steve says, then points at Loki. “You aren’t welcome there.”

Loki pouts--honest to god pouts. Tony wants to beat himself up for wanting to bite and suck on Loki’s lower lip despite the current circumstances.

“Loki and I can find Barton and Romanoff, set up somewhere _else_ safe besides some guy’s apartment,” Tony offers. He’d rather not stick around to see the emotional fallout, honestly.

“It is no trouble at all to take you where you wish,” Loki agrees.

Steve nods tersely, then looks at Tony.

“Contact me when you’ve got something.”


	10. Part 1 - Chp 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a chapter. Gosh. Let's see some more of how Loki works, shall we?
> 
> (I love each and every comment I've gotten so far <3 thanks so much guys)

Tony realizes, somewhere in the mess of them setting up camp in a military bunker he’d converted and hoped he’d never need, that he hasn’t eaten in… he’s not sure.

“I’m hungry,” Tony announces. “Are you hungry?”

“What do you wish to eat?” Loki asks, amiable. There are MREs, but the idea of not having to eat them in favour of actual food sounds pretty appealing.

“Finger food,” Tony finally decides. “I need to be able to work at the same time.”

While he could probably send Loki to retrieve Barton and Romanoff on his own, he’d really rather not after what happened with Bucky. Getting the suit serviceable will likely only take a few hours; he hopes that Barton and Romanoff have a few more hours.

(He’s been steadfastly ignoring it’s only been five minutes on Earth. He doesn’t want think about it.)

***

Tony’s forgotten that Loki left to get food until he finds himself taking a bite of an eggroll, body instinctively picking up the food set in his workspace the way it always has. He blinks, finishes it off, and grabs another, looking up from the mess of wires he’s been buried in to find Loki standing next to him and watching him. Rather, watching his hands, though he does look up at Tony after a few moments.

“This is partly your fault,” Tony points out.

Loki snorts, attention returning to the suit.

“If you’d simply _listened_ in the first place, then we would have been able to leave much sooner,” Loki says.

Tony considers that as he polishes off the second egg roll. A look around reveals that Loki’s come back with a wide array of goods--egg rolls, various dumplings, cheese sticks, fries, slices of fruit and cheese. Finger food with total disregard for how none of it really is from the same cuisine.

Huh.

“You paid for this stuff, right?”

“Yes.” Loki rolls his eyes, but he’s leaning to get a better look at where Tony’s been resoldering wires. “No, it will not vanish come morning.”

Tony starts in on some promising looking rangoons and watches Loki poke a bit. He’s not actually hurting anything--his movements are all precise, sure, like he knows how this all works already and he’s curious to see what’s wrong and where. If he wasn’t Tony’s soulmate, Tony might find it hard to believe, but he’s always known they’d be good with electronics because what else would they be good at?

He needs someone he can _talk to_ , even if right now he’s just feeding himself and watching Loki.

“Do you want anything?” Tony asks eventually, realizing he hasn’t seen Loki reach for any of the food. Loki shrugs.

“I know you haven’t eaten anything. Unless you ate while you were getting food, which _rude_.” Tony looks around for something that seems like Loki’d eat and spots a cheese stick that has managed to survive. If Loki doesn’t enjoy cheese sticks, Tony isn’t sure they can still be soulmates. “Here, try this.”

Loki glances at him, looks back at the suit, and then suddenly all his focus is on Tony. Tony’s hair stands up at the intensity behind Loki’s gaze.

“Come on,” he says instead of swallowing his tongue. “Try this.”

It’s not like he has a self-preservation instinct anyway.

Loki just keeps staring at him; Tony _almost_ thinks Loki’s waiting on him to take it back, change his mind.

“It’s not that hard. You just open your mouth and…” Tony trails off, swallowing as Loki doesn’t even bother to take the damn cheese stick from him, just leans a bit forward from where he’s crouched over the suit and bites. His eyes don’t leave Tony’s, not until he pulls away--then his eyes flutter shut, faint colour blooming over his cheeks, and he makes this _sound_ that goes straight to Tony’s cock. His tongue flicks briefly over his lips before he opens his eyes, glazed and _hungry_ as they find Tony’s again.

“Like that?” Loki asks.

Tony doesn’t think, just hauls Loki up and kisses him. He wants that look on Loki’s face again, glazed and pleased and shaken underneath it all, and as he tangles one hand in Loki’s hair, his other is looking for more to feed him. He bites Loki’s lip, sucks on it, then licks his way into Loki’s mouth.

Loki shakes, an almost pained keen getting free as his hands grab hold of Tony’s arms. Tony breaks off for air, glances long enough to find an apple slice, then turns his attention back to Loki.

“Eat,” Tony says, and he’s not sure if it’s a prayer or a command, but it has Loki shuddering again, glazed green eyes focusing on the slice of apple Tony’s offering and mouth dropping open. Tony maneuvers him up against the work table, gets between his legs and trails a line of kisses along Loki’s jaw. He traces the apple slice over Loki’s lips, kissing the corner of Loki’s mouth, hisses, “ _Eat_ ,” in Loki’s ear.

Loki’s skin is flushed, glowing, Loki’s not even managing to keep his own weight up anymore, knees given out and relying wholly on the table and Tony to keep him upright. There’s nothing slow about how he eats the apple, just a few quick bites, and he’s licking at Tony’s fingers in ways that should be _illegal_ , chasing every last drop of juice.

“Tony,” he whines, breath gasping pants. He keens as Tony rocks against him, teeth digging into Loki’s neck. Tony can feel his pulse, feel him, it’s like a fire lit in his whole being--the sounds Loki makes, how he’s come completely undone at being fed.

“Ask,” Tony says, nosing along Loki’s jawline. Loki sobs. “ _Ask_.”

***

They go until Tony runs out of food, until they’re on the floor, Loki half-sobbing and delirious as Tony murmurs into his skin, pulling Loki apart every way he knows how, like it’s written into his bones, his soul--this and this and _this_ , until Loki’s howling and clawing at Tony’s back, biting him, drawing blood and all Tony can think is _take it take it_ as his blood coats Loki’s hands and mouth.

Tony collapses next to Loki in a sweaty heap, brain trying to catch up with what the hell just happened. Besides sex--sex almost seems like an after-thought, really.

Loki is already twining around Tony, pressing kisses into Tony’s skin and nosing at his neck, his throat, at the bite marks he’s left in Tony’s skin like brands. Tony closes his eye and wraps an arm around Loki’s shoulders without thinking about it, stroking the god’s hair.

“Fuck,” Tony says. There’s a dim light against his closed eyes, but he doesn’t think anything of it.

“Mmm?”

“The suit. Budapest. Barton, Romanoff. You know, that thing we’re _supposed_ to be doing.”

The light moves. Tony frowns, then opens his eyes and realizes a few things.

Firstly, the light is _Loki_ \--his skin is glowing, like he’s been lit from the inside, and the way his eyes burn like green fire only makes it worse. Secondly, where Tony’s starting to come off the adrenaline high, Loki is vibrating, settling a few moments before shifting _again_ , restless. Thirdly, that hum is definitely _also_ Loki, though he doesn’t seem to realize he’s doing it.

He looks alien and brilliant and eye-searingly perfect.

“Shall we?” Loki asks. He sounds eager, already getting up and pulling Tony along. “Let’s, here, why not—” and he’s off, talking so quickly that Tony’s barely catching every other word, just gets _exhilaration_ and _joy_ thudding through Loki’s pulse. Tony stares at him, but Loki isn’t paying attention, just doing something to the suit.

“--Like _so_ ,” Loki says, stepping back. There’s a flicker of green and gold crackling along the suit, but otherwise it looks perfect. Tony blinks--Loki’s just fixed in moments what was going to take him hours, and he doesn’t even look winded.

“What do you think?” Loki asks, practically bouncing on his feet. Tony is pretty sure that Loki’s been explaining a plan, but like hell did he get any of it.

“Sounds good to me,” Tony says and hopes he doesn’t regret it.


	11. Part 1 - Chp 11

“When did I agree to not have my armour again?” Tony asks.

“I thought you said this sounds _good_?” Loki hisses and yeah, okay, maybe Tony should have asked for some more clarification.

“It did! You were happy! Everything sounded happy!”

Loki growls, yanking Tony around the corner of the hallway. There’s a spray of gunfire that is definitely _way_ too close to Tony’s not armoured flesh, and then there’s some screaming as Loki leans around and makes a complicated gesture with his hand.

“Do I want to know?” Tony asks.

“No,” Loki says with a smile.

“Right, then I’m not asking. You’re _sure_ they’re in _this_ building?”

“Yes.” A pause. “At least Barton.”

“Loki—”

“ _I am aware_ ,” Loki interrupts. “I do not _know_ Romanoff half so well to find her. We best hope she is with Barton, else I’ll bleed him when we find _him_ to find _her_.”

“We aren’t trying to kill them!”

“It’s only a _little_ ,” Loki says. He grabs a surprisingly intact gun (if only due to how not intact the owner currently is) as they go back down the hallway and shoves it at Tony. “Barton is _useful_.”

***

“I do not understand--he’s _here_.” Loki looks about two seconds from stomping his foot or stabbing Tony for sheer want of stabbing someone. Tony takes a careful step back out of his reach just to be safe.

“Look, I don’t know how you’re doing this, but maybe you—”

“ _I am not wrong!_ ”

“Okay, okay,” Tony says, trying to remember what Barton said about soothing a stressed out Loki. He’s not coming up with much, but there’s probably backup on the way soon that he _does not_ want to still be here for. “Look, why don’t we regroup? He’s clearly still alive, we don’t have to go far, but this isn’t _working_.”

Loki doesn’t say anything, eyes tracing the ground as he turns, focused on things Tony can’t see. He looks up at Tony, opens his mouth, and then whatever he was going to say is drowned out by a rumble of thunder that makes the walls shudder.

“Huh,” Tony says, “I don’t remember there being a storm outside.” He glances at Loki, but Loki’s frozen with an honest _panic_ in his face, like maybe if he doesn’t move nothing will happen. “Loki?”

Loki darts towards him, an arm wrapping around his middle, then _everything_ goes up in chaos. He can hear the building collapsing in, gets the weightless sensation of _falling_ , grabs Loki’s arm on instinct before he’s landing on something squishy and hard and he _really really hopes_ he did not just land on a _corpse_.

Then Loki is yanked away and Tony can’t get his eyes open fast enough, to try and follow him, because no, that’s not okay, except he definitely _isn’t_ going to be getting up as fast as he wants--getting tangled up in Barton’s limbs as he tries to get up.

“Hey, I found Barton.”

“Fuck you and get your fat ass off of me already,” Barton spits, trying to get out from under Tony. “ _Fuck_ —”

Which is about all the warning Tony gets before _Loki_ is landing on top of them both.

Loki is already up and on his feet, a spear in hand Tony doesn’t remember him having with a wicked blade and light gleaming the same blue of Tony’s reactor. Once Tony’s managed to push himself off Barton and situate himself still firmly behind Loki--giving Barton a helping hand along the way since Tony did land on him--he notices that Loki isn’t pointing it at the threat. He’s holding it ready, but otherwise his stance is all poise and calm.

“ _Thor_ ,” Loki sneers. “What a _pleasant_ surprise.”


	12. Part 1 - Chp 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THOR

Thor is _massive_. He’s broad in the shoulders, taller than Loki, muscles rippling in his arms as he tenses with an equally massive hammer in one hand. His hair is gold and shining with searing sky blue eyes entirely focused on Loki. Not to mention the way the air _crackles_ around him, charged with the promise of storms to come.

“None of your jests, Loki,” Thor says, pointing, and see, that seems to Tony like _exactly_ the wrong thing to say, because even _his_ impulse is a self-destructive mouthing off.

“How much energy did it take to send you here, I wonder? Or have you finally rebuilt the precious Bifrost? Took you long enough.” Loki starts to circle Thor. Tony exchanges a quick look with Barton before they both head for better cover, though Thor doesn’t seem to have eyes for anyone but Loki.

“Or is there something else that your precious All Father has sent you here for, and I am, as ever, incidental?”

“Loki, we thought you _dead_.” Thor takes a step towards Loki, face pained. Loki stays still, letting Thor get in his space, and the other god carefully sets a hand at Loki’s neck with an intimacy that has Tony’s skin crawling and him grinding his teeth.

“Did you mourn?” Loki asks carelessly, already seeming disinterested in whatever answer Thor might give him.

“We all did!” Thor says, near tears, and Tony can see how the words hit Loki, leave him vulnerable in a way Tony’s only seen a few times, all when Loki is raw and frightened and unsure of his place in the world. “ _All of us_. Brother, please—”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

“I am not your _brother_ ,” Loki spits, shoving Thor away, a snarl on his face making him wild and vicious. No, more--Loki’s barely holding together at the edges, fury bleeding the shadows and he looks like he might—

“Loki, please, I do not wish to fight you. I do not know what I’ve done to offend you, why you felt you needed to pretend your own death—”

Loki lunges and Tony decides that while he’s survived a _lot_ , the epicenter of two gods going at it isn’t one he really wants to try adding to the list. Loki’s sworn not to hurt Tony, so hey, might as well test that out--Tony manages to get himself between them, grabbing hold of (fur, that’s definitely fur and scale and slick), other hand trying to push back Thor (shit he’s pretty sure he’s just burned his hand and his teeth are buzzing, copper electric taste blooming on his tongue with the contact).

“ _Stop_ ,” Tony says, putting all his suddenly very real fear into the word.

Amazingly enough, they do.

Of course, then Loki’s hauling Tony away from Thor, hissing and spitting; he’s holding a form, even if Tony can’t quite make out what it is through the shadows except big, twisting restlessly and claws tearing up the ground beneath them. Thor, at least, still looks mostly human. There’s something.

Thor is also staring at Tony, consideration in his eyes as he draws back a few steps. It gets Loki to relax a little more, even if there’s still a low growl in the room.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Barton says. “Also, backup is here.”

“Great. Let’s have the not-family-family get together back at the base.” Even though it makes Tony’s skin crawl a bit, he reaches up to snag Loki by the jaw (wolf-snake-beak, shifting slowly between and all at the same time, wicked and vicious) and get the god to _look_ at him. “I want to go somewhere safe. We have Barton. That’s why we came here--mission accomplished. I want you to bring the big guy so he doesn’t crash through the base like he did this building.” He’s a little surprised how calm he is even though Loki’s mouth of choice is large enough to bite his head off in one go. For all the animalistic appearance, his eyes are still _Loki’s_ \--poisonous green and intelligent and aware, hyper-aware even--and touching him is running a jolt through Tony just as _sure_ and _complete_ as the first time they touched.

It’s still Loki, big and inhuman and nightmare fuel as he currently is.

Loki hisses, a little, a string of images pressing into Tony’s head that are sharp and bitter with sarcasm, but then there’s a hiss of _close your eyes_ that Tony’s getting used before there’s a _yank_ and they’re sliding into the spaces between things.

***

“That was pretty stupid,” Barton tells him.

“I’m not giving you any scotch,” Tony tells him and goes back to nursing his drink.

“You landed on top of me.”

Tony sighs and pushes the bottle towards Barton.

“Loki done then?”

“Yeah. Well, at least with me. He’s pretty high strung right now.”

“It is not my job to calm him down. Nope. I did not sign up for this. I’ve done my duty, I made sure we didn’t get turned into a vaporized mist when those two went at it.” Tony pauses. “Thor, right? Do you know anything about him?”

“Did you not read any of the reports on that?”

“SHIELD didn’t have Thor in custody.”

“Then you’re extra stupid.” Barton grins, wide, and while he probably does mean it a bit, it takes the bite out of it. “Battle, thundestorms, summer, people who aren’t loaded the way you are, and soulmates. He showed up in ‘67 without any powers and looking like a normal human, left not too long after when he got his hammer back. The town wasn’t so much his fault as something that his brother sent after him to finish the job that being cast out didn’t, or something. No one’s quite sure, and it’s not like anyone was around then to ask him.”

Tony polishes off his drink. Soulmates huh?

“I’m gonna go talk to him. Give me my scotch back.”

“No courage like liquid courage,” Barton intones, handing it back over.

***

If Tony’s honest, the main reason he’s bothering Thor is to see if he can’t find some way to defuse the situation between him and Loki. Starting with Loki--while Loki is working on figuring out where Natasha is--seems like the dumbest idea possible; it took a solid ten minutes after Thor left the room before Loki finally settled on his more human self. Dressed for war, sure, but at least not destroying the room when he tried to move in a space never designed with a god in mind.

If he’s still twitchy like Barton says, then there’s not going to be anything Tony can do without winding him back up again.

Thor is outside of the base, arms folded and staring over the cliff face not so far away. He’s thinking, that much is clear, mouth set in a firm and decidedly unhappy line.

“Drink?” Tony offers the bottle and doesn’t look away as Thor looks at him.

“No,” Thor says and goes back to looking out over the forest.

Tony can handle silence. He also can handle not sharing his alcohol.

Unfortunately, he came out here to find a way to defuse things, so he can’t just shrug and go back inside. He takes his solace in sitting down on a nearby log and pouring himself another glass of scotch. It’s almost companionable, this way.

Tony’s most of the way through his glass when Thor finally speaks again, his voice a low rumble.

“You are my brother’s soulmate.”

“Seems that way.” Tony sips his drink and waits on Thor. Waiting, he’s decided, is the best way to go with these god types.

Tony almost thinks that’s all Thor’s inclined to say. He studies the bottom of his glass, tilting it to watch the way the light cuts through it, debating if he wants to go for glass four or stop now. Loki will probably figure out where Natasha is soon, after all, and he’d rather not be trashed for that.

“He has not needed you… in a very long time. An epoch, at least.”

 _That_ gets Tony’s attention.

“He was not pretending death, was he?” Thor asks, finally turning to look at Tony.

“Not really, no.” Tony stares up (and up) at Thor. Thor looks disappointed, mostly at himself, and he heaves a great sigh that Tony feels the last gusts of.

“Then I have done him a great wrong, in more ways than one.”

Tony shrugs--he doesn’t know about all that, but he also doesn’t know anything about Thor and his relationship to Loki other than Loki reacts with extreme murder to being called _brother_.

“You said he hasn’t needed me. What do you mean by that?”

“You are his soulmate,” Thor says. “When he does not need you, then the two of you do not meet.”

“Wait, you mean to tell me that I’ve lived… who knows how many lives, thinking I don’t have a soulmate? Just because he—”

“Loki,” Thor interrupts gently, “is unique. As are you and your relationship to each other. Who else could ever help him but the creator of the one who constructs ways out for Asgard? Who else would ever be strong enough to bear the weight of not knowing his soulmate but the one who created the very cynicism that threatens its mere existence?”

Tony stares.

“You are everything,” Thor says. “All of the souls who created us are, but you most especially. Without you, we have no Loki. Without Loki, _change_ and _entropy_ do not exist.”

“I think I need another drink."

***

Basically, Tony gathers from talking with Thor, gods are thoughtforms. Sort of. They’re also real, solid beings, tangible, who exist on real other realms (read: worlds) that one day humanity will likely see for themselves. They grow and change, personalities developing the same as any human’s even if their sense of time is totally different.

But the thoughtform thing--once, who knows how long ago, there were a handful of souls (physicality hadn’t _quite_ been conceived yet) who thought up _gods_. The earliest souls with  _concepts_ at their core they brought to life. Maybe intentionally, maybe not--Thor isn’t sure on that detail, can barely remember it.

The gods have been developing since then the way ideas do, and the souls that first created them were the first soulmates.

(Apparently, not everyone used to have a soulmate, but Thor glosses over how it went from a few to everyone.)

One of those souls was Tony.

Tony isn’t sure how much of all that he believes--it’s a lot to try and take in--but Thor doesn’t seem to care whether _Tony_ believes so much as he _understands_ because this is what _Loki_ believes, and belief--well belief is almost the same as _truth_ with a thoughtform nearly as old as the universe.

***

“I need to apologize to my brother,” Thor says, standing up from where he’s been sitting next to Tony on the log.

“Yeah, about that.” Thor stops, looking at Tony. “Don’t call him brother. He kind of didn’t like that.”

“I noticed,” Thor says dryly. “But what else is he? When I last saw him, he said he was not for reasons that I did not know. Now I do, and I know no other way to reassure him that for all that may have happened, he is yet my brother--in bond, if not blood.”

“You could try his name,” Tony suggests. “Just… he’s not all together. If you get my meaning. He nearly killed me for lying about whether I was scared or not when we first met.”

Thor frowns.

“He is unwell.”

Tony shrugs.

“He’s something. I just think maybe you should do us all a favour and not call him brother until you two have some quality time together to sort out what the hell happened.”

“I am grateful for the warning,” Thor says, all formality. “What is he attempting to do?”

“We need to find Romanoff. Barton donated some blood to the cause.”

“Are they related?”

“No, soulmates. Loki seems to think that’s enough.”

Thor smiles, damn near blinding.

“More than,” Thor says. “I shall assist him.”


	13. Part 1 - Chp 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wish ao3 would note this updated properly woooooeeeeeee
> 
> also hi natasha

“She is here,” Thor says, pointing to a map. Loki looks a bit sullen next to him, arms crossed over his chest; if Tony didn’t know better, he’d say that Loki’s acting a bit like he’s had his spotlight stolen. He catches the god’s eye, winking, and while Loki huffs, he also relaxes a little.

“ _Really_?” Barton asks.

“Yes.”

“You’re _sure_?”

“Absolutely,” Thor says, crossing his arms.

Tony looks at Barton and shrugs.

“You were under the flooring of a building in Budapest. Maybe she knows someone and got herself out when you decided to hide under some floorboards.”

Barton sighs.

***

“You’re meant to be dead,” Barton points out. “Your armour would be way obvious that you aren’t.”

“Element of surprise,” Loki adds, but he’s preening a bit to have someone else validate his reasoning to Tony.

“There is no one in the Carpathians. No one.”

“Except Natasha. And you know. All the military that likes to use it as a playground.”

“And those following her. You may stay if you wish.”

Tony throws his hands up and goes to find Thor. Like hell is he letting Loki go off without him--he feels like he’s the only one keeping him halfway in check, a feeling only made worse since Thor first showed up.

***

Tony doesn’t miss that Loki is keeping both Tony _and_ Barton between him and Thor, but he also doesn’t say anything. Thor is not doing so good a job from hiding his hurt over the whole situation; at least he doesn’t say anything about it either.

They end up, thanks to Thor’s really worryingly precise directions and Loki’s knack for just _stepping_ places, in a small valley. There’s a small shack, there’s trees, and on the whole it looks very picturesque--other than Loki, they all relax after a few moments of nothing happening. Somewhere, there’s what sounds like trees being felled; they can’t be that far away from civilization.

“She’s here, right?” Barton says, breaking off from them. “The shack?”

“No,” Thor says, “soon. She has been moving quite rapidly since I loc-- _helped_ locate her.”

Loki makes a quiet noise next to Tony; his expression blank, eyes considering Thor and not the trees around them. Tony watches him, which is why he notices the flash of red first not too far behind Loki, realizes the tree falling noises have been getting closer way too fast, and that the direction Natasha is going is going to put them right in the path of what’s following her.

“Guys,” Tony says, all it takes for the others to all glance where he’s looking and come to the same conclusion as him.

“Stand aside,” Thor says, utterly calm. “B-- _Loki_ , if you would get the agent Romanoff out of the way?”

“You are aware that whatever is following her is knocking down trees, right?” Tony points out, eyebrows climbing as Thor just readies his hammer.

“Yes,” Thor says and _grins_.

Before Tony can say anything else, Natasha breaks the treeline, not seeing them at first as she turns her head to look behind her. She looks like shit, sticks and leaves in her hair, suit torn and scraped up in several places, and she nearly stumbles in her glance back at what’s following her.

Loki grabs her around the waist before she can, pulling her out of the way to where Tony and Barton are. Barton has his bow out but not drawn. Loki grabs the knife Natasha is trying to gut him with and shoves her towards Tony.

“ _Stay_ ,” Loki says, then vanishes.

Natasha stares at them, clearly trying to switch tracks with a feral look that reminds Tony a little too much of Loki’s less sane moments.

“Took you long enough,” she finally spits, and draws a gun to level it at the treeline.

The ground is actually trembling now, and Tony gets himself behind the two assassins. Maybe he should have risked letting Loki go with Barton and Thor, stayed behind to plan and get in touch with Steve and start sorting out their next steps.

(And _maybe_ he should just fire a missile at New York for fun--the results probably wouldn’t be too far off.)

Which is when green and angry crashes through the trees, easily dwarfing Thor. It-- _he_ , Tony realizes, recognizing the figure from news stills, the Hulk--roars, looking around for Natasha and eyes landing on Thor. Another visceral roar and he dives for Thor and how the hell does Thor think that he can possibly take on the Hulk, _fuck_ —

Thor _laughs_ , catches the punch, and _headbutts him_.

Tony realizes, after a moment, that his mouth is hanging open and closes it. He’s seen the Hulk pulverize tanks and shrug off missiles, but he’s not getting through Thor. He’s not getting driven back either--just more pissed off--but it’s still something to see.

“Maybe,” Barton says after a moment, relaxing his bow and staring just as much as Tony, “we should back up a little.”

“Yeah,” Tony agrees.

Natasha mutters something Russian and Tony is pretty sure it’s an insult, but she joins them in getting farther away from where the two are utterly destroying the small clearing they’re in.

“Does this just—”

There’s a flash of green, a sudden hiss and ripple of energy that fills the air with burning, and then the Hulk just _drops_.

“Loki,” Thor says, pulling his hammer blow so it doesn't hit the other god. Loki gives Thor a smug smile, toeing at the unconscious and quickly Banner-fying Hulk.

“I did not wish to be here _all_ day,” Loki says.

Tony stares a few more moments, then fist pumps.

“What the hell?” Barton asks, staring at him.

“I get to meet _Bruce Banner_!” Tony crows, and yeah, maybe he’s over excited, but _finally_. He catches Loki looking at him and grins at the god.

Loki smiles back, quiet and pleased.

***

It’s only later Tony thinks to ask Loki how he knew that the Hulk wasn’t the only one in there.

“I know how to read,” Loki sniffs before stalking off.

Tony frowns; Loki hasn’t picked up anything to read since he showed up--Tony knows. Tony doesn’t do print on paper media, and he’d be notified if Loki had used any of the tablets or terminals. He doesn’t chase after Loki, though.

Loki doesn’t lie--Tony believes that even if it might be stupid--but it begs the question _where_ Loki read about Bruce at all.


	14. Part 1 - Chp 14

With Natasha back, there’s now a buffer between Tony and Steve again; probably for the best, considering how Loki 'helped' Bucky and how pissed Steve likely still is. Natasha is also the best equipped of them to coordinate, since her job is basically not ruffling feathers in the first place.

Tony doesn’t want to say it, but it kind of looks like they have a team coming together. Two gods, a Hulk (provided Banner wants to help; Tony hopes so), two top tier assassins, Rogers and whoever he’s pulled together…

Oh, and Tony. Of course.

They might actually have a shot at this. How about that.

***

“You’re awake! Welcome back.” Tony sits down in the chair by the bed they put Bruce in, resting his elbows on it and grinning wide at the doctor.

“What?” Bruce asks, groggy and rubbing his face.

“It’s great to finally meet you. You know. In person.” Tony offers his hand. Bruce just stares at it, eyebrows furrowing. “Big fan of your research, and you know, the humanitarian efforts, those don’t hurt.”

“Where?”

“Secret base, I’m supposed to be dead. Hydra. Or SHIELD, they’re practically the same thing at the moment. Which is what we’re working on fixing like some sort of slapdash super hero team.” Tony frowns, leaning to look Bruce in the eyes. No green or anything; Bruce just looks confused and very, very stoned. “You follow?”

“Who are you?” Bruce says instead. He’s probably not following.

“Tony Stark, or, you know. Ir0nManR0xx.”

Bruce looks a bit green, but more in the kind of sick way than the going to become an angry monster way.

“Oh,” he says, then passes out again.

***

“What I don’t get is getting _in_ ,” Barton complains. “Some of us can sneak in, but that doesn’t make an army, and it won’t serve to disable more than the main hellicarrier if we go for that, or take out the building. _Everyone’s_ going to know what’s up.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Steve says, confident.

“Provided we can get in, I can get control of their network…”

“Tony,” Loki murmurs in Tony’s ear, jolting him out of his half-paying attention reverie. “How long do you intend to allow this farce continue?”

Tony stares blankly at Loki for a moment.

“Wait, you need us to get in? Disable things? Fuck up their tech?” Tony waves his hand. “I’ve got that covered. Why aren’t you-- _we_ planning the more important details again?” God, he _hates_ meetings.

Everyone--except for Loki, who has settled back in his chair looking smug and possibly proud--stares at Tony.

“What?” Tony asks irritably, glancing up from his phone. “Did tech change overnight or something?”

“What exactly do you mean, Stark?” Natasha says, voice silken.

Tony shifts in his seat, trying to keep from bouncing his foot under the table. He wonders if Banner is awake again yet.

“I’ve got the best tech and designs on the market. I’ve practically got a monopoly these days, there’s not a damn thing on the market that doesn’t have part of my work in it--everything from toasters to supercomputers. They’d need to make everything from scratch if they’d want to avoid it and even that isn’t sure as current network is—”

“82%, sir,” Jarvis chimes from his phone.

“Really? It’s gone up, great.” He looks up at them, setting his phone on the table and folding his hands over his stomach. “I’ve got 82% of all worthwhile tech--computer systems run nearly everything important these days, didn’t you know--ready to shut down at a moment’s notice. Or worse.” He shrugs. “I’m not picky. The rest is hackable.”

“All, like all _SHIELD_? Or--” Barton says.

“Everything. On the planet.” Tony smiles in the silence, showing his teeth. “I did say I wanted people to stop destroying themselves. No one ever listens to me.” He huffs. “Anyway, I’m going to go check on Banner again. Let me know the rest when you get that sorted.”

***

Tony doesn’t think anything of Loki following him out into the hallway until Loki pins him to the wall and starts to kiss him within an inch of his life. By the time he starts to find his feet, Loki’s let go and walked back to the conference room, leaving Tony in the hallway half-hard and still trying to pull his brain back together.

***

Banner is awake again; less stoned from the looks of things, too. He’s glancing around the room when Tony comes in and sitting upright on his own--all good signs. Maybe they’ll actually talk this time.

They’ve talked for just over a year at this point--always online, usually email exchanges. Tony’s never really tried to push into Bruce’s space for all he admires the other man and wants nothing more than to get some science on with him; it seemed like it might be too much. Tony had found him via a forum--Bruce was sometimes inclined to help desperate biochem and physics students with their homework.

Tony honestly doesn’t even care if Bruce wants to help take down Hydra; he just wants to _talk_ to the other man.

“Hello again, good—” a glance at his watch, “evening.” Tony grins. “Do we want to try this again?”

Bruce blinks at him, owlish and adorable. Tony wants to keep him forever.

“Am I being held hostage?” Bruce asks tentatively. “Because I don’t think that would work so well.”

“No,” Tony says. “If you want to go you can.” He tries not to let his face fall.

“Oh. Okay.” Bruce rubs his face. “I remember… I don’t remember much, actually. What happened?”

“Your greener self was chasing one of—chasing Romanoff. No idea what she did to set you off really.” Tony sits down next to Bruce. “We intercepted you two, the resident crazy knocked you out, and I insisted we bring you back so you wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the Carpathians without anything to wear.”

“Thanks?” Bruce frowns. “Do I know you? Other than you being Tony Stark.”

“Ir0nManR0xx.”

“Huh. That’s pretty self-centric of you.”

“I know,” Tony says, preening a bit. “No one ever suspects it’s actually me. It’s great. How do you think I get anything done when I want to browse?”

Bruce smiles at that.

“Anyway, how are you feeling? Loki said that what he did should wear off within the day. Do you need water? Is that a thing? Do you eat? One fourth of the people here don’t eat in the traditional sense of food to mouth.”

“I have a headache,” Bruce admits. “And I could go for some water.”

***

Bruce hadn’t so much been _planning_ to be in the Carpathians as he was trying to get out of Europe and back to India. He’d ran into Natasha along the way and she had, at least at the time, pretended she was heading to India too. The details about what had set him off were fuzzy, though there was some being shot at when they hit the edges of the mountain range--most likely at Natasha, but then Bruce couldn’t remember.

Then Loki happened—”zero to seeing other galaxies stoned in less time than it takes to blink”--and blew what little coherent memory he might have had out of the water.

Which is really all Tony bothers to find out before he brings up a theory they were tossing back in forth in their latest email chain, and really, why would _anyone_ expect Tony to let Bruce know what was going on in the world and why they were in a hideout when Bruce is coherent enough for science?

After all, he _told_ Bruce already. It’s not _his_ fault that Bruce was still too out of it to remember. And _Loki_ didn’t say anything when he tracked Tony down (apparently the meeting was over) and quietly settled in next to Tony, watching them discuss quantum physics with sincere interest if no commentary of his own to throw in the mix besides the occasional sentence that got them both more worked up and excited.

“What?” Tony asks, annoyed, when Barton shows up.

“So does it sound good?” Barton asks.

Tony actually stops, looking at Loki. Loki blinks back innocently. Tony, having learned his lesson on just agreeing to things because they put Loki in a good mood, decides that he’s not going to chance it.

“Does what sound good?”

“You said you were going to tell him,” Barton complains, which just gets Loki to smile more.

“What’s going on?” Bruce asks.

Barton sighs.

“Right! So Hydra and SHIELD are basically the same thing now. We’re trying to take them down. You did go without burning SHIELD down, too, right? There’s no saving that tree.”

“Rogers and I persuaded them that would be the best course of action,” Loki says.

“Great. Anyway, they tried to kill me and think they pulled it off, so now we’re going to make them regret all that mess and put them down for good.”

Bruce is staring at him.

“Would you like to join us?” Loki adds.

“I…” Bruce trails off, pinching the bridge of his nose. Tony leans in for a closer look, which just gets an amused huff from Loki.

“Could you possibly start from the beginning?” Bruce finally says without looking up.

“How about I field this one," Barton says.

***

“I don’t know why _Barton_ thinks he’s going to do a better job of that than me,” Tony complains to Loki in the hallway.

“You skipped several pertinent details.” Loki seems unaffected by the look of betrayal that Tony gives him. “At any rate, now that you are no longer occupied…”

“Oh. The plan. How dumb is it on a scale of one to ten.”

“You’ll survive it.”

Tony blinks.

“That is not a number.”

Loki shrugs.

“It’s the only thing that matters to me.”

“We’re going to make sure we _all_ survive it,” Tony says. “So with that in mind, is it workable?”

Loki heaves a sigh like he has no idea why he bothers with Tony, giving him a pained look in the process.

“Yes,” Loki finally says. “It is workable.”

“Great,” Tony says. “Tell me all about it. Also, I’m hungry. Are you hungry? Do we have time for food?”


	15. Part 1 - Chp 15

Tony’s part of the plan is almost laughably easy. He’s wanted a reason to test how well his quietly built system works and this is the best possible reason to do so. Figure out the kinks, adjust for the unforeseen--because there’s _always_ a hiccup, that’s just how these things work.

He even gets to wear his armour. The speed and flight are going to come in handy once he knocks their systems down, so he can go to where he’s needed and cover for the others at a distance.

Tony’s pretty sure the only reason Thor is helping them is because he wants Loki to come home and he’s deferring to Loki’s current interests--which just so happen to be what Tony’s interested in. Doesn’t change Thor’s sworn up and down he can neutralize any air threats that Tony’s net doesn’t catch.

Steve’s ready to tell everyone inside SHIELD about Hydra, supported by the newly memory-laden Bucky and his wingman Sam Wilson (Tony _really_ wants a better look at those wings). Romanoff will get to Pierce with Loki as a stealth aide; Barton is going to keep Banner with him and provide cover if they need it. Ideally, they won’t need the Hulk and Banner can stay safely Banner.

Honestly, it _should_ be cakewalk. In and out. While something might slip Tony’s control, there’s more than enough contingencies for if that happens. They’ve totally got this.

Which is exactly why Tony isn’t surprised when--everything else going smooth as it can--Natasha radios in that Loki’s gone missing.

Fuck.

***

Even without Loki, Natasha gets where she needs to be. They get Pierce. Everything SHIELD related gets dumped out for everyone to pick over, fully exposing Hydra in the process and getting the rest of the world sitting up and paying attention to the very real problem of the remaining Hydra cells.

Tony would feel more bad about SHIELD also getting ruined, except he never much cared for Coulson threatening to tazer him considering the electromagnet in his chest and, honestly, Fury greenlighted Project Insight in the first place--fucking creepy as hell.

As far as “I’m not actually dead” announcements go, it’s pretty great.

Minus Loki. That’s not so great. Even Thor is looking a bit worried about Loki’s absence.

Tony and Thor get back to the base he won’t need to stay at much longer--who knows, maybe Loki got bored--but Loki’s not there. Tony searches the whole place, it’s not like it’s a big facility, but there’s definitely no Loki.

It’s on his second pass he realizes that there is _also_ no Tesseract.

“Thor,” Tony asks slowly, “what are the chances your brother would have an interest in a glowing cube?”

Thor frowns at Tony.

“You know. Like… a possible door to other places, possible energy source, can be harnessed to make weapons, that sort of thing.”

“If it is all of those things, I suspect that it would be of great value of him. What are you missing, Tony Stark?”

“The Tesseract is gone.”

“The Tesseract?” Thor repeats slowly, face going blank. “The cosmic cube. You have it?”

“Had,” Tony says with a grimace, stomach dropping as Thor’s face gets darker.

“Stark,” Thor says carefully, hands flexing, “how exactly did you find my brother?”

**-end Part 1-**


	16. Interlude 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's an interlude! There's one more of these, and you'll know when we get to it.
> 
> For anyone interested, I have created a tumblr full of the fics/art that either were part of my initial concepting or I've left a nod towards within the fic. You can either visit the [tumblr](http://sayingyournamesin.tumblr.com/) or you can see it all spread out in a handy clickable view via its [archive I spent some time setting it up, so have at~](http://sayingyournamesin.tumblr.com/archive)

**INTERLUDE 1**

It is quiet between the stars, the spaces he feels most comfortable in.

(Here he can _hear_ himself, dozens of voices murmuring their ways through all the stories that are _Loki_ , catch glimpse and taste of all the cycles that have passed, all the ones that will come.)

(He does not allow himself to notice the lack of anyone with him this trip; _sentiment_.)

( _More_ , he cannot risk harm coming to that brilliant blue fire that this Tony. It is good to see him so godlike, to see that he can and may grind Midgard beneath his heel--he will be safe there. It does not matter ( _it matters most_ ) that he has not seen Tony (Amolika-Veeral-Amulya-Tola— _priceless_ ) since _before_ all that changed in him _changed_.)

Asgard would have him a stolen relic; nature demands winter and monsters. Consume, subsume, destroy, _freeze_ \--it has always hovered at the edges of himself, and he had not thought of it. Not put the pieces together

Loki does not know what he would have of himself now

( _lie_ \--Tony. He would have _Tony_ and the soul-shattering weight of his attention all for Loki)

but he knows that whatever it is, all things have a cost.

He has a price to pay; in his hands, he tosses and turns the blue-glowing cube, eyes distant as it murmurs to him where it wishes to go.

(There is truth, in her, and Loki will take her where she will so that he _knows_.)

He is so terribly, terribly hungry.


	17. Part 2 - Chp 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's get this party started~

**Part 2**

“Cap, coming in on your left,” Sam says over the comms, and there’s a touch of smug to his voice that Tony tucks away to look at later. Probably some dumb inside joke from the amusement in Steve’s reply.

They don’t need _him_ , though; Tony keeps his attention on dismantling bomb two of three. Somewhere, Natasha and Bucky are dealing with the other two. He hears, distantly, a boom of thunder and the clatter of metal hitting the ground--Thor, most likely taking down another slew of the Doombots.

Tony hates Doombots only slightly more than he hates the bomb in front of him. Richards seriously needs to get his shit together and put Doom down for good--Tony’s tired of cleaning up their messes.

“Got mine,” Tony says over comms after a moment of nothing exploding in his face. A few seconds later, Bucky and Natasha are both doing the same.

Steve rattles off where he needs the three of them--mostly separate directions--and after that it’s all cleanup.

***

The initial group that exposed the Hydra issue managed to stick together somehow, though Tony is never quite sure how. The Avengers--name courtesy Janet or the Wasp, depending on which press person is asking--handle the issues that arise from a team of superheroes suddenly appearing on the world stage. Tony throws money at the group, gives them a tower and base, and pitches in from time to time when he’s needed.

In reality, the Avengers is a side project for him. A time consuming one with people he generally views as friends, but a side project nevertheless. When the group got started, he mostly viewed it as a way to test out new suits and tech on the field.

Tony, after all, needs the absolute best if he’s going to chase after Loki.

***

“Jane, how’s it going?” Tony asks, removing his helmet after he touches down in New Mexico.

“Tony!” Jane looks harried and excited all in one, pushing her hair back from her face with one hand. “Did you get my message?”

“There was a fight, sum it up for me.”

Jane Foster was, when Tony went looking, the best qualified of the people looking into advanced interstellar travel. She still is, really, and while some of her theories and hypotheses sound a bit out there to Tony, well, quantum mechanics are utterly insane to the point of unbelievability anyway.

“I picked up that energy signature that you gave me.” Jane shoves some papers aside, pulling out a star chart and pointing at a set of coordinates. “Here, around about 1.5 light years away.” Her eyes are bright. “I think it’s getting closer, but I need more readings before I can be sure.”

“That…” Tony frowns. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Jane blinks.

“Why not? I thought you said—”

“If it was Loki, he’d just show up.” Tony rubs his chin, staring at the coordinates, turning it over. “Unless he’s hanging out on a comet or something, or he’s with a group.”

“You think he sold it off to someone, and that’s who’s getting closer?”

Tony shrugs.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily Loki.” It doesn’t feel _right_ , and maybe it’s unscientific, but he’s had enough things twinge his intuition before blowing up in his face that he’ll buy it. “But it is the Tesseract.”

They both stare at the star chart for a moment.

“Ring up Thor,” Jane says. “We’ll need another blood sample. I want to try the other search over the block of space that the Tesseract pinged.”

***

Tony debates mentioning Jane finding the Tesseract’s location the entire way back to the Tower. It’s very possibly nothing, but he can’t help but feel if Loki’s let the Tesseract go, either it was taken from him by force or he gave it away. Considering the uses he’s seen humans put the damn thing to, he’s not exactly hopeful whoever has it now would be coming in peace.

“Cap, got a minute?”

Better to alert _someone_ who knows what he does outside the group than not anyone, just in case something happens or he’s not around later.

“Sure,” Steve says, excusing himself from where the rest of the team are exhausted and watching a movie to destress from earlier. “What is it?”

Tony leads him to the kitchen--mostly private, easy for him to see anyone approaching, and not likely to raise eyebrows like if they _did_ go to somewhere private.

“Jane found the Tesseract’s energy signal.”

“Really? That’s great!”

Steve, of course, was there at the start; he knows about Loki, that Tony’s been looking for him, has been--perhaps--the most sympathetic to Tony’s search of all of them if Thor’s not allowed in the running. He would be, after the loss and then sudden reuniting with one of his soulmates, and the other rapidly fading from dementia and old age. As little as they can usually relate on, Steve _gets_ why Tony’s refused to just Loki go in a way none of the others--particularly Barton--grasp.

“It might not be all sunshine,” Tony says, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms. “Jane thinks it’s getting closer, though she’ll let me know on that, and we didn’t pick Loki up anywhere near it. She’s going to do some more checking, of course….”

“Of course,” Steve says, quickly catching on and frowning. His eyes search the air as they search over possibilities.

“You think whoever has it might be hostile.”

“You were around when it was first uncovered again. What do you think?”

Steve nods.

“I don’t want to raise any alarms yet--it’s a solid light year and half out still. I do, however, want someone with pull to know in case it does become an issue.” Tony sighs, tapping a finger against his arc reactor for a moment before noticing and stopping. “I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I. Keep me posted.” A pause, then Steve adds, “Thanks, Tony.”

It’s not what he was going to say, Tony can tell, but he doesn’t try to get what Steve wanted to say out of him. Steve likely changed it because he knew Tony wouldn’t want whatever overly sympathetic thing he was going to say--which just goes to show even an old dog learns new tricks.

“No problem,” Tony says, and heads off to his workshop to see if he can parse through the readings Jane copied over for him to look over.


	18. Part 2 - Chp 2

He gets woken up by an insistent prodding in his side. Tony blinks, rubbing his face and trying to figure out where he’s fallen asleep. His neck is killing him and he stares at Bruce for a long moment before he registers that it’s _Bruce_ and he has _coffee_.

Tony lunges for the mug before Bruce can change his mind--Bruce is a strict tea drinker himself--greedily sucking it down and burning his tongue in the process. It’s perfect, black and vile and mostly caffeine, everything good about coffee.

Bruce just shakes his head, pulling a stool up to sit by Tony.

“What’s up?” Tony finally ask once he’s drained half the cup and probably destroyed a few taste buds in the process.

“Remember how Thor’s been working with me so I can narrow down the biochemistry on soulmates?”

“Sure.”

“Well, I wanted to talk some science with you.”

“You know I love it when you talk dirty to me,” Tony says with a leer.

Bruce smiles.

“So, turns out there’s a difference between god to human soulmates and human to human soulmates…”

***

Tony wakes up again; this time he’s managed to make it to his bed, in part because Bruce had nudged him out of the lab and towards it after their conversation had started to wind down. The room is dark, and a quick glance at the clock confirms that it’s night, not just the lights and windows being dimmed.

He feels weird, out of sorts, and he isn’t quite sure why he woke up at all. He rolls onto his back, rubbing his breast bone beneath the arch reactor--it aches, he must have slept face down at some point--and stares at the ceiling. He wonders if he’s going to be able to fall asleep again.

_Tony_ a voice hisses down his spine.

Tony bolts upright, nearly falling off the edge of the bed in the process, and starts swearing.

“ _Loki_ ,” he says, torn out of him; immediately, he’s a rush of emotions, too much to process--fury, relief, alarm, surprise--and then his eyes adjust to the dark, parse what he’s seeing, and it gets _worse_.

_Terror_ , he realizes dimly. He’s actually frightened, copper tang on his tongue--he bit his lip, broke skin--scrambling back from where Loki is already crawling up onto the bed. Tony shakes as Loki reaches for him

(the room smells like _ice_ and _blood_ , smell of something half-rotted and burned and _scorched_ (not something, _Loki_ ), there’s blood staining the bedding that claws are tearing through as Loki prowls closer, blood and frost and ugly charred flesh leaking clear fluid into his fur, flash of teeth just as coated in the red-red-red fluid _fuckfuck_ —

Loki twitches away, tumbles off the bed, and Tony catches a glint of silver and gold that spark in fur, gets a second look. Loki’s all beast and human at once, a giant thing writhing on the floor, snarling and spitting, turning his claws on himself to try and tear the chains off, fur and scale quickly covering the floor in the attempt and—

_fading_. Half-faded. Loki _isn’t here_ , it’s a projection, and as quickly as Tony realizes it he notices the blood on the bed vanished when Loki fell off.

Loki isn’t here.

He catches a flash of teeth as Loki’s mouth (fangs-wolves teeth-beak) opens to bite down on himself, an animal trying to gnaw itself apart to escape a trap--he’s going to _kill himself_ ; the terror snaps and Tony’s scrambling off the bed closer to the rapidly fading projection, crouching down by where Loki’s on the floor and hands hovering, wishing he could _touch_ but it just passes on through.

“Loki,” Tony says, then again, sharper, with real command in his voice, “Loki, _look at me_.”

Loki goes still, body massive and serpentine, four and eight arms both with wicked claws all, breath ragged and head momentarily caught between serpent and wolf, tongue lolling out of his mouth. The illusion gets a little more solid as Loki’s eyes manage to focus on Tony, green—

but not _right_ , Tony quickly realizes. Green, but there’s blue in there, webbing over the hue and turning it _wrong_ , just as blue as the sparks on the chains when Loki struggles against them. An ear--the deer one, the other is all wolf--flicks towards Tony before Loki keens.

Tony risks trying to touch him. He can’t quite, though he feels cold jolt up his arm this time, and just lets his hand rest just where Loki would be if he were here. It seems to soothe Loki a little, eyes closing and breath starting to even.

“Loki,” Tony murmurs. “What happened to you?”

Loki’s eyes open again, focus on Tony, but he doesn’t manage to say anything, just more whines and growls, quickly growing frustrated, a jumble of images that don’t make anything coherent brushing past Tony’s head. He twitches, like he’s going to start fighting again, and Tony quickly shushes him.

“Yes-no,” Tony says. “Blink once for yes, twice for no. Okay?”

A blink.

“Are you near the Tesseract still?”

A blink.

“Are they hostile?”

Another lone blink.

“Do you think you can get loose?”

Two blinks. Tony chuckles darkly--he has a feeling if Loki _could_ get loose, whoever had decided to chain him in the first place wouldn’t last too long. He’s reminded all too much of SHIELD; even with Hydra involved, Tony’s had a lot of time to consider the fact that it wasn’t even a month before Loki helped tear both apart.

“We’ve figured out where the Tesseract is,” Tony says. He pauses, unsure how much he can safely tell Loki. “If you’re near it, you’re about a light year and half away at current speed. Are they aiming for Earth?”

Loki makes a noise.

“Don’t know?” That gets a blink; Tony nods, leaning back on his heels and trying to figure things out. “We’re going to figure out a way to get to you once we’re certain of the coordinates. And the Tesseract--don’t think I’m not pissed at you for just up and vanishing with my toys, by the way.” His fingers twitch, almost about to drum the cold beneath his fingers, before he stops himself. Loki snorts.

“Is it a big group? Okay. US military scales here--platoon? Bigger or smaller? Company? Fuck. Battalion?” Tony stares at Loki, stomach sinking. “Regiment? Brigade? Brigade. High end?” A blink.

_Of course_.

Tony rubs his face.

“And let me guess, they’re totally just a scout force of aliens that happen to know how to bind a newly fed god, right?”

Tony almost wants to say Loki’s huffing cough is laughter.

“Okay. Okay. We’ll get it figured out. Easy peasy, we’ve faced worse. Remember that whole Hydra fiasco? Definitely worse than galactic hostile aliens.” He frowns at Loki. “How long can you keep this up?”

Loki shrugs, twisting his head so that it’s pressing--would be pressing--along Tony’s thigh. As is, it’s just _cold_.

“Just… try to stay as long as you can. Jerk.”

The cough is definitely laughter.


	19. Part 2 - Chp 3

“I know where Loki is,” Tony says as he bursts into Thor’s room. It takes him a minute to remember that it’s three in the morning. Thor tends to follow human cycles for no reason Tony understands (if _he_ could just keep going on on no sleep or food he would), and so Thor is-- _was_ asleep.

Thor takes almost no time to process what Tony said.

“Where?” Thor’s already on his feet--and _right_ , he sleeps in the nude.

“Tesseract--he’s been bound and locked up again, it’s why he’s not showing up when we look for him. Thor, it’s a scout force.”

Thor crosses his arms; Tony has no idea why he isn’t leaping at this chance.

“How do you know all of this?”

“He showed up,” Tony says, patient. Well, as patient as he can be. “A projection. Thor, he looks like shit, we can’t just—”

“And, if he is bound as you say, how did he manage such?”

Tony’s brain grinds to a halt.

“He got lucky?” he suggests, but that bad feeling is back. Worse. It’s too valid a question, one Tony didn’t have time to think of in the chaos of Loki’s bloody arrival.

Thor sits down on the edge of his bed.

“You are right,” Thor says, voice gentle. “I do not believe all is well. But I also do not believe that all is as it appeared to you. Did anything strike you of particular note about his appearance? How did he appear?”

Tony hesitates, then leans against the door frame.

“His eyes,” he finally says. “They looked… wrong. Green, sure, but there was blue too. Looked like webbing. He wasn’t human--or at least he wasn’t trying to be.” He licks his lips. “He couldn’t fake that sort of pain.”

Thor hums, a low sound that vibrates through the room like distant thunder.

“Loki can fake many things,” Thor finally says, “when it suits him. He will lie by action, if not words.”

“He tried to bite through himself,” Tony says; it all looked so _real_ \--he doesn’t want to believe Loki would fake that sort of pain.

Thor only looks at him. He’s thinking--it’s written all over his face, charging the air with a low hum of static. His gaze is _ancient_ , an actual weight pressing down on Tony.

Thor’s churning through possibilities-- _probabilities_ , Tony realizes with a jolt. He’s known Loki for so long--so much longer than Tony--that he’s weighing what Tony’s reported against what he knows of his adopted brother; time that spans longer than Tony can fully comprehend.

Tony keeps his mouth shut and lets Thor think.

“I believe,” Thor finally says, “that he is trying to warn us. I also believe that he may be bound in some way, but perhaps not the way he lead you to believe. We are as much physical as metaphor.”

“Thoughtforms.”

“Eyes are the window to the soul,” Thor says, agreeing. “We cannot change them ourselves; if Loki’s are changed, then there is something wrong.”

Tony considers that, then nods.

“Do we still go then?”

Thor frowns, then shakes his head.

“I do not know. I believe that is what Loki wishes, but I do not if that is a wise course of action. At the least, I think we should not alert any to our presence--including Loki.”

“Okay.” Tony pauses, then shakes his head. “Okay.”

“Try to get some rest. It seems we have a busy day ahead of us.” Thor offers a small smile, but his eyes are as unhappy as Tony feels.


	20. Part 2 - Chp 4

There’s a little arguing, but Tony finally talks Thor into not telling the others where they’re headed. It’s not a _good_ idea, but the idea is to not get caught--the more people who tag along, the harder that’s going to be.

Besides, Thor’s big enough to be two people--which makes three.

“Very well,” Thor says unhappily. “But if we are caught—”

“I take full responsibility. We’ll be fine. We’re just checking things out, right?”

“As you say.”

***

It’s different, traveling with Thor. Thor goes by ways that scream down Tony’s nerves, light his synapses on fire, near blind him with brilliance and a shatter of rainbow hues even through his closed eyes. It’s hard and fast--like lightning--and if Tony didn’t have the suit he is keenly aware that he’d be little more than a fried crisp when they leave the byways of light and reenter human physical space again.

It’s as far from Loki’s quiet _not space_ travel as possible.

They come out in the vastness of space above a fleet of ships. Maybe ships--they look organic, at least the ones that don’t look like so much debris. Space whales, Tony’s mind suggest as they lazily propel themselves forward. Everything is blue and cold and gray. There also a _lot_ of them.

They are, to the best Tony’s tech and Thor’s strange aptitude for light can do, cloaked. Tony has no idea what frequencies the force is monitoring, if they are--he can’t see any obvious terminals, but _aliens_.

Which he is very, very firmly not letting him think about. Just like he’s not letting himself think about all between him and space is his suit.

It’s Thor who points out what looks like a central base--a smaller sized asteroid with an excellent view of the rest of the force and, as they draw closer, what looks like a damn throne carved into the surface. Which really, how tacky.

They don’t land but they do circle, both skimming for an obvious leader. Or something. Tony gets some decent looks at some of the troops--vaguely humanoid, bipedal, gray and kind of gross looking--but it’s all getting recorded for later, so other than making sure to get a closer zoom on one of them, he ignores them.

What’s frustrating is he can’t really see how they’re _controlling_ anything. For the most part, it all looks almost autonomous--the space whales aren’t helping that--and there’s some weird blue glow but it doesn’t look like a control panel or interface at all. Tony records them anyway, because he’s not so thick-headed to think maybe they aren’t and he doesn’t recognize them for that, but so far all this is is frustrating.

He catches sight of a familiar form wrapped up in black leather with green trim, dirtied gold and a horned helmet both gleaming in the poor light.

There aren’t any chains, any wounds, nothing even slightly animalistic about him. Loki looks downright regal and in total control of himself, his spear that Tony vaguely remembers from when Thor first showed up in one hand. He looks, well… like all this is beneath him, and he’s deigning to be there, talking to a hooded figure with the wrong number of fingers.

He does not look like he’s dying or going to tear himself apart.

Tony circles around, gets a better visual on him, and feels something go a bit cold inside as Loki looks up with a smile--directly at Tony. But no, he’s still talking, and he’s not focusing on Tony; he’s mocking whoever it he’s talking to.

His eyes are still wrong; the blue is worse, whatever green might be in his eyes subsumed, and Tony can’t tell if it’s the crap lighting or just that’s how far it’s progressed. All he knows it’s _wrong_.

Tony peels away, heading back towards he and Thor had agreed to meet, taking his time to grab more video of the rest of the force. The more he has, the better.

It’s better than thinking about Loki.

***

“Did you see him?” Tony asks once Thor gets them back, still trying to blink the light out of his eyes.

“Yes,” Thor says.

“He’s practically working with them!” Tony yanks his helmet off, starts to get the rest of his armour off. As much as he’s tried not to think about it, he hasn’t been able to stop and it has him fuming angry. What would have happened if he had just rushed in there like Loki wanted?

“Possibly,” Thor says, settling against a workbench and crossing his arms.

“Possibly?”

“His eyes—”

“Were worse,” Tony admits. “They weren’t that blue. I could still see some green under everything.”

“They are the same blue of the Tesseract.”

Tony pauses, tries to remember that particular shade of blue. It’s possible, he supposes…

“Jarvis, pull up a model of the Tesseract.”

One springs to life, and okay, _yes_ \--that is the same shade of blue.

“Do you think it means something?”

“I do not know. There are some rumours… I do not know. Speculation will do us little good.” Thor shakes his head. “It is possible that Loki is working with them of his own volition. It is also possible he is appearing to work with them for his own ends, and that what he told you was a warning, a trap, or perhaps both. After all, who did he find to warn? And how willing were you to go straight to him without thinking?”

“Layers,” Tony says.

“All the way down,” Thor agrees. “It does not harm to overthink what Loki does and suggests, if only to be more prepared for the possibilities.”

Tony sighs.

“He’s giving me a headache and he isn’t even _here_. I’m going to get Steve and let him know what the hell we’ve got coming our way.”

“I will join you.”

How the _hell_ did Tony end up with this mess?


	21. Part 2 - Chp 5

There’s a flurry of activity--activity Tony can’t avoid, since he’s also stuck in the middle of it no matter how much he wishes he wasn’t. Being Loki’s soulmate doesn’t seem to come with many advantages when it looks like Loki is helping an hostile scout force get to Earth.

(A quiet part of Tony points out that if Loki _really_ wanted the force on Earth, he’d have just brought them. Tony doesn’t know if that’s true--if Loki could take that many through his not space, but he doesn’t push the thought down either.)

Steve is, predictably, not thrilled that Tony talked Thor into going without talking to any of the rest of them, but other than a guilt trip level seven stare, he focuses more on what Tony and Thor brought back and a bevy of questions as they go over all the footage again and again and _again_.

Which is why Tony is hiding out in Bruce’s lab. Usually Bruce visits him, not the other way around, and so far no one has seemed to realize where he’s gone to hide. They probably think he’s outside the tower which is fine as far as Tony’s concerned.

“I just don’t get it,” Tony tells Bruce, bouncing a test tube in hands.

“Mmm,” Bruce hums. He has been listening to this for nearly thirty minutes, but so far he’s just let Tony rant. This is why Bruce is his favourite. “What does Thor think?”

“That something’s up, but he has no idea what.”

“You could see about finding out,” Bruce suggests mildly.

“How? You want me to just go up and ask Loki? That’s a bad idea. Have you even been listening?” Tony asks. Maybe Bruce shouldn’t be his favourite.

Bruce just smiles his small little smile, eyes crinkling at the edges.

“You’ve finally lost it, haven’t you?”

“No,” Bruce chuckles. “Though I don’t know if you can do lucid dreaming. Or meditation.” Bruce’s brow furrows. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sit still.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“It’s a long shot,” Bruce says, “but between what Thor’s told me about soulmates, what you’ve griped about gods, and my research, I have a feeling that you might actually be able to at least _pick up_ some of what’s going through Loki’s head right now.”

“This sounds really New Agey. You know how I feel about New Agey, Bruce.”

“I do. But think about it--gods are supposedly just a thought made real by their soulmate, right? They’re thoughtforms who happen to be physical. The soulmate bond with them is—”

“--mostly one way,” Tony says, beginning to catch on.

“Exactly.” Bruce grins.

“And they exist in physical and metaphorical space at the same time—”

“--like dreamspaces—”

“--so a person—”

“ _their soulmate_ ,” Bruce says, grinning wide, eyes twinkling.

“Their soulmate has a unique backdoor into their consciousness, because the gods are basically just an external thought-idea given form by the soulmate.” Tony frowns. “It still sounds pretty New Agey.”

Bruce shrugs and turns back to his workstation.

“That’s because it is. Humans have been having religious encounters for centuries through altered perception--vision quests, dreaming, trance states, mind-altering drugs. We know gods exist. Either everyone is mass hallucinating the same things, or there’s a metaphorical space that gods live in and humans can access from time to time. A god-human soul mate connection means you’re predisposed to Loki’s metaphorical spaces already--after all, you created them when your soul first came into being if what Thor says is accurate.”

“This is going to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“Provided you can even do it,” Bruce says.

Tony rolls his eyes. He can do anything he wants--he’s _Tony Stark_.

***

In all the rush, he’s entirely forgotten about Jane. As much as he doesn’t feel like repeating everything again, what he saw is _gold_ for Jane’s research. Jane is one of the science bro triumvirate; it’s inviolate law to share findings that help the others with their pet projects.

Technically, he’s not _supposed_ to share the footage he brought back with non-Avengers; highly classified stuff, this could cause a panic, yada yada. All the normal stuff that Tony’s used to hearing and totally ignoring.

Jane’s a science bro; she’s not going to leak anything to the public.

“Tony, this is _incredible_.” Jane starts flipping through the readings he gave her--a wide spectrum of readings starting from Thor’s teleport all the way through thirty minutes post return.

“I thought you’d say that.” Tony grins.

“And there’s video?”

“Yup. Not an alien planet, but there are aliens if that’s your thing. If you can take a look, see if you notice anything I haven’t—”

“Sure, not a problem.” Jane’s still flipping through all the readings from the teleport. “Tony, if I’m reading this right, I might have the missing pieces for the Einstein-Rosen bridge I’ve been trying to build.”

“That’s good, right?”

“That’s great.” Jane looks up to beam at him. “I’ll start looking over that video and the readings here soon, let you know if I find anything.”

“Awesome. Say, you have a minute to talk over this off-the-wall idea Bruce suggested?”

***

“It’s a little untraditional,” Jane starts.

Tony snorts.

“It’s a little untraditional, but I don’t see a reason why it _wouldn’t_ work. If you think quantum physics is a thing, it makes perfect sense; it’s just an issue of figuring out how to cross streams. Sort of.” Jane shrugs. “It’s worth a shot, at the least.”

“I forget that you live and breathe untraditional,” Tony mutters.

“Let me know how it goes,” Jane says with a smile.


	22. Part 2 - Chp 6

Problem--Tony Stark has never meditated a day in his life. Altered states don’t count when they involve blackout drunk (which he’s not a fan of reaching anymore anyway), and trying to sit down and zen is nearly impossible with everything that demands his attention.

It’s _infuriating_.

Trying to lucid dream is, somehow, _worse_. The idea of going to bed when he’s not exhausted is utterly foreign, and the only dreams he manages to have are disjointed things that he can’t remember come morning.

Silence happens to other people; Tony’s been fine with that forever but suddenly it’s a problem.

“It takes practice,” Bruce says. “It’s only been two weeks.”

Two weeks out of seventy-eight they have before the aliens are at Earth. Great. Fabulous. Because _that’s_ promising.

“This is stupid,” Tony says, but he keeps trying.

***

The first time Tony manages to actually get his headspace quiet, he nearly gets scared out of his damn skin when the alarm goes off.

“ _Seriously_ ,” Tony snarls, trying to get his heart to slow down, lividly angry in a way that feels like being set on fire. It’s so _raw_.

The problem is the world doesn’t stop, and as he flies out to deal with… fucking fish people, what is this _Lovecraft_ , he’s swearing at no one in particular. This is so damn _stupid_. He’s going to stop, absolutely--he’s not making progress, and he still feels out of sorts from the sudden yank back from the quiet, the sensory overload of the suit and his teammates’ voices in one ear, Jarvis in the other, trying to follow _everything_ and he can’t—

He doesn’t know what hits him, only knows suddenly he’s hitting the water. He gets control again, skims under the surface for a few moments, and comes back up, spinning around to fire a shot off at the frankly too large octopus waving a tentacle at him menacingly.

This is so damn stupid.

The tentacle gets blown off, which is great minus his brain is too scrambled to realize that one of the multitude of flashing lights is a warning about a threat behind him, to hear Jarvis in his ear trying to alert him-- _it’s all too damn much_ —

He feels something slam into his back, wrap around, and then he’s under the water. He can’t move, though he gives it a good go, feels the seams of the suit creaking and there’s water getting in. He sucks in air just before it covers his head, feels water go up his nose and tries not to choke.

_He’s drowning, there’s voice screaming at him in a language he doesn’t know, he’s going to_ —

He gasps, water flooding his mouth, his lungs. He kicks, tries to pull his head up and out of the water, but the hold on him is too tight, too much, and he can’t think, can’t breathe-can’t breathe-can’t brea—

_Tony_.


	23. Part 2 - Chp 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is potentially the ~weirdest~ that the fic dips. (this is why METAPHORS EVERYWHERE is a tag. i think)
> 
> Everything's a metaphor, and we'll get an explanation of what happened here in part 3.
> 
> For now, enjoy the end of part 2 and see you tomorrow with the second interlude!

_Tony_.

Tony spins around. He’s… on a plain. There’s frost, steam rising through cracks in ground. The world shudders, goes still.

“I’m dreaming,” he says out loud, but the words twist off his tongue, live and iridescent things that shimmer, twine around each other serpentine, eating themselves, before the air hisses “I am awake” with his voice.

This makes sense. He _is_ awake, here.

In the distance he sees a mountain. He starts walking. The steam, when it rushes up near him, is hot--venting, escaping. He looks at the ground, but it’s only a shell, a case. Dirt-covered, but glossy beneath. This is a forge--this is where things die. This is where things are born.

This makes sense.

“You should not be here,” a magpie says, tilting its head.

“I don’t know where else I would go,” Tony tells it and keeps walking. This is true--this is _home_. Forges, creation, hard rock and simple truths. Tested. Tony can think of no where else he belongs but a forge, _creating_.

The magpie huffs, then it settles on his shoulder. Its claws dig into his shirt, draw blood, and it says, “You’re going to die.”

Tony laughs. Of course he is; don’t they all?

“Suit yourself,” the magpie says, but it doesn’t leave.

***

There are voices here. They do not all make sense. Some babble, broken things full of numbers and nonsense syllables joined together in an endless stream; others talk as if conversing though Tony never hears the other party. Some are silent--these are the loudest.

Tony and the magpie are alone.

“Who are they?” Tony asks.

“You.” The magpie leans, beak tugging Tony’s ear. “Fragments. All that was and is and will be. He keeps you here.” It starts to preen a wing. Tony adjusts his balance so the magpie does not fall off. “You could go back. He won’t let you leave. Selfish thing, but the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree does it?”

“No,” Tony says decisively. “I don’t think so.”

***

The mountain does not get closer. It does not get bigger or smaller; it simply is.

“I need to go there,” Tony tells the magpie.

“Then go.”

Tony frowns at it. This, walking--it’s not working. He can tell that already. He needs to go to the mountain, though, and he starts to think. The magpie jumps off his shoulder to the ground, scratching and pecking idly.

Tony has no armour here, or he’d fly. He doesn’t think flying would work either. That’s not how one moves.

_Not space_.

Everything is exactly the same distance away, always. He’s going about this the wrong way. He thinks about the words, before, how even now they burn his tongue a little when he speaks aloud.

“I’m at the mountain,” he tells the magpie at the mouth of the cave in the side of the mountain.

“Now you’ve got it,” the magpie preens. “Last chance to go back. You know how now.”

“No,” Tony says, standing. “I need to know…” he doesn’t remember, but the words do, and they form in the air, hang unspoken for him to read aloud like a cue card.

_what’s happened_

He doesn’t know why he needs to know what’s happened, so he doesn’t say the words.

“Dangerous, that,” the magpie says, craning to read what hovers before him.

“I don’t think it’s right,” Tony says.

“Nothing is ever right.”

“I need to know.” That feels right.

“Your funeral.” There’s no one to say anything, only Tony at the edge of a cave.

He goes in.

***

It is dark, but Tony knows the way. He’s been here before.

“You shouldn’t be here,” a boy says. His eyes are wide and green and familiar; his eyes are wide and red and familiar. He twists his blue and white hands. “We aren’t well. You won’t be able to leave. We need you not here.”

“Do you ever let me leave?” Tony asks honestly.

The boy laughs, bitter.

“Sometimes. Most times you free yourself.”

“It’s what I do,” Tony agrees.

“You should still leave.”

“There’s no way back,” Tony points out, because there isn’t. There’s only forward and what will come to be; Tony does not repeat himself except he all the ways he does.

“You are going to die.”

“I know.”

Loki sighs, then holds out his hand.  

Tony takes it.

He’s somewhen else. Beneath his feet shines refracted light, rainbows harnessed into a bridge that spans reality.

“Die well,” the boy tells him, and then Tony is falling.

***

_Tony_.

He’s dead, soft and weightless and _black_.

_Tony_.

He has hands, he can create--he lives. He blinks, and he is in the cave--where it ends. The walls are threaded with faint blue light that sets his teeth on edge, and they twist up out of the ground, wrap around the vast shadow before him.

_Tony_ , and stars die.

The shadow is watching him. The blue twists and writhes like the ripple of water over not-skin, muzzle a not-mouth. The light refracts as it passes through the shadow and casts three shapes on the wall writ large: a snake, a wolf, a woman.

“I need you,” Tony says. The words hang in the air, and the great shadow tilts its heads. Blue crackles and spits and hisses.

_All need me. I am the rightful king. None exist without me._

“No.”

_Truth_ the shadow says and the blue light trills agreement.

Tony picks up a hammer that is there because he needs it. He brings it down on a blue line that runs by his foot. The stone shatters and the shadow’s screams tear the air.

There’s green, now, somewhere in the shadow’s depths.

“This is not who you are.”

_It is who we are. We rule, forever. We do not change. We—_

The pain tears through Tony, twists him inside out, and he blinks his vision clear. He picks the hammer back up.

“Let him go,” Tony says; the blue sings _truth-truth-truth_. When Tony destroys the third fragile line, he falls over, hands over his ears to block the not-sound.

_I will devour you whole_ the shadow snarls.

“That’s better,” Tony says, raising the hammer up over his head.

_Stay the same_ the blue hums in Tony’s bones; everything hangs for a moment, then Tony shoves it aside and brings the hammer down.

This time, he’s bleeding when he pulls himself up. The shadow watches him, eyes green and fire and brilliant. They gleam red as the light slips off them, and they are hungry.

His shape has started to change.

_I will devour everything._

“Good,” Tony rasps. “Make room for the new.”

The shadow cocks its head like a magpie.

_Consume?_

“Create,” Tony agrees, and shatters the last line.


	24. Interlude 2

**Interlude 2**

_truth-truth-truth_

_change is of no use, all things exist as they ever will_

_the rightful king—_

the voices stop, turn inwards.

Loki blinks, opens his his eyes. He frowns at the Tesseract, at the silence and shift in focus; shakes his head as if that might clear it.

(There is something that is no—

pain explodes behind his eyes, wild and feral and he will _devour the world whole_ , he will _destroy_ it, _how dare they_

(consume- _create_ -consume- _create_ )

The taste of his own blood in his mouth as he bites down on the flesh of his hand is all that draws him back ( _hunger_ ), all that keeps him from screaming a challenge. He shakes, curled in on his knees, breath ragged and harsh as he tries to place what has _changed_.

The Tesseract is silent.

“ _No_ ,” he hisses, dragging himself back, trying to look ordered, in _control_ (he wants to rend this fleet apart, wants to devour them all, save Thanos for last, and it might ease the pain in his ribs, the _need-need-need_ )

(who was in his head, _who would dare_ —

he feels a heart jolt, but it is not his, feels air and confusion

\-- _Tony_.)

He snarls, lashes out for no other reason than to destroy.

(consume- _create_ -consume- _create_ )

He can’t stay here. He needs--needed the Tesseract so that he could take Thanos, and the Tesseract is that Thanos’ sees use for him for, and without it, without it _communicating_ with him--rejected, _Tony_ , he’s going to—

He freezes, muscles twitching beneath the skin.

Plans change. Foremost, he must not allow Thanos to find out about the Tesseract--must not give the Tesseract time to latch onto _someone else_ here and betray _him_ as he is sure it so dearly wants to do.

Even the Cosmic Cube takes betrayal poorly.

(Then he will find someone to _eat_ , several someones.)

( _Burn it to the ground_ a voice that sounds like Tony’s laughs, and _oh_ how Loki intends to.)


	25. Part 3 - Chp 1

Tony wakes up.

( _He breathes his soul back in_.)

Physically, he’s nothing but ache--burning lungs, choking up water, head pounding a steady beat (there are words, _crea_ — he loses them), limbs weak as the team leans back around him.

He breathes and stares up at the faces looking down and tries to figure out why he isn’t terrified or flailing, why there’s no self-defensive quip on his lips.

“Shawarma?” he asks instead. “I’m starving.”

They look around, clearly uncertain; Tony pushes himself up to check out the surroundings.

“Seriously,” he adds. “I think my stomach is trying to eat itself.”

***

So they get shawarma. Tony regrets it almost immediately, but he keeps eating because he wanted shawarma and he _is_ hungry. It’s just… not filling. At all. And being around the others is grating his nerves in a way he doesn’t quite understand.

He doesn’t think it’s them so much as he’s just _pissed_.

It’s not even any one thing. It’s just a general anger writhing in his chest, just above the hunger in his belly, and for all that’s been going on he can’t think of anything that would have him this _angry_. Which is infuriating, which is making it worse, just like this dumb food that isn’t actually helping him not feel like he’s starving.

Thor’s watching him.

“ _What_?” Tony says, blinking at the fury that manages to escape and turns the word acid.

It gets everyone else’s attention.

“Are you okay, Tony?” Bruce asks.

“Fine. Dandy.” Tony focuses on his food and ignores the uneasy silence.

***

Bruce wants him to get checked out.

“You _died_ , Tony.”

Thor is making a face like this explains a lot. Tony wants to punch him _in_ his face, but instead he agrees because otherwise it’ll raise more suspicion. They’re worried, and Tony tries to convince himself that they aren’t being sentimentally humanly weak because he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t have had that thought before and it’s a little—

well. It _should_  be concerning.

It’s not.

***

Tony’s in his lab when suddenly he just… _isn’t_ angry anymore.

He’s still hungry. It’s less than it was, relieved in part by going over the footage he brought back with Thor piece by piece with the notes Jane sent him while he was busy being drowned. He’s been annotating them with details he’s surprised he didn’t notice the first time, but he’s not sure why he’s noticing them now, so many as if he’d been up close and personal with the ship when he didn’t get near them at all.

He sits back and considers the possibility that something has gone wrong somewhere.

He doesn’t remember anything from when he drowned to when he woke up--not anything whole. There are bits and pieces that drift in, strange alien landscapes that are simultaneously other things, the sensation of falling, being eaten whole and the ice and fire of burning again he had at first put down to spitting up water and sucking in that first lungful of air.

( _Everywhere is exactly the same distance away. Words are--_ )

He stands up abruptly.

“Jarvis, where’s Thor?”

***

“What happened to me?”

There’s a thud, then Thor says, “You died.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“It rather does.”

“You are being obtuse and it’s not helping. I should be freaking out right now.”

“You feel emotions that aren’t yours, know things you though you know not how, and have a striking resemblance to Loki when you snarl.” Thor emerges from the pantry carrying several different boxes of snacks. “I am aware.”

“Because I died.”

“Because you died.”

Tony breathes out, turning it over in his head.

“This is a soulmate thing, isn’t it?”

“Yours, yes,” Thor says, then shoves an arm load of the snacks at Tony. “Help me carry these. You are no doubt hungry.”

***

Loki and Tony are unique, which Tony quickly realizes Thor is saying because it’s kinder than _possessive_ and _selfish_ and _jealous_.

They are, in some ways, the original unhealthy stereotype--two souls for whom no one else exists. When Tony physically dies, even if only briefly, his soul seeks out Loki instinctively.

Death changes a person--and if they come back to the same flesh, it strips away some of who they were.

“There is always a price,” Thor says.

“So now I’m… closer to him?”

Thor smiles grimly.

“There is less of you to separate you. You died, and you came back. What do you think Loki would take as price but part of your self?”

***

Tony wakes up to a weight on his chest and green eyes staring at him, the press of a knife to his throat.

“Are you actually real this time?” Tony asks idly, though he knows Loki is, in fact, here.

“What did you _do_?” Loki snarls. Tony should probably be frightened, but instead he’s finding himself vaguely aroused; Loki looks glorious with anger twisting his features, and if not for Loki pinning him to the bed he’d reach up to pull him into a kiss.

(Loki won’t hurt him.)

“I should kill you,” Loki spits. “You are always-- _always_ \--such a nuisance, a _hindrance_ —”

Tony smiles, feels Loki’s anger bubbling in his chest, wildfire.

“Then do it. Go on.” Tony’s smile widens as Loki stares at him silent and pale with fury, shaking, but the knife does not press deeper. “You can’t, can you?”

“You are _fixing_ what you _ruined_ ,” Loki snaps. Tony feels a familiar hum crawl across his skin, then a yank (all places exist in the same space, only a word away--Tony sees how Loki does it this time) and they're gone.


	26. Part 3 - Chp 2

They do not end up with Loki’s space pals, despite what Tony thought would happen.

No, they’re definitely still on Earth. They’re in some sort of abandoned underground facility--former SHIELD, and the recognition that isn’t his makes him realize _Loki_ knows this place. He’ll need to look himself, of course, but he suspects that this is where Loki was kept before.

“Home sweet home?” Tony asks.

“No one will look here,” Loki says dismissively, fury and attention both already turned away from Tony.  “You should have come. I don’t know why you didn’t.”

“Thor thought it seemed a little convenient that you were that fucked up but could still manage to send a projection.” Tony pokes at a powered off terminal, but this place is dead and dust-covered and utterly dull. “So what did I ruin for you?”

“I was going to _eat_ ,” Loki says. It’s almost sullen. “Now the deal I had bartered to pull it off lies in tatters and I am left with an entity waiting on the moment it can destroy me, I’m sure.” He’s talking to a familiar cube on one of the counters.

“The Tesseract is _sentient_?”

Loki deigns to give him a look that says exactly how idiotic Tony is. Tony just smiles back at him.

“Can I get some clothes?”

Loki rolls his eyes, snaps his fingers, and turns his attention back to the Tesseract. Tony examines what he’s in--suit, tie, slacks, all of it high-quality and fit for a prince. Of course; he should have realized.

“I _had_ struck a deal with it. You managed to rather effectively ruin that by unchaining me. That part of me.” Loki scowls. “And of all the times you decided to _help_.”

“I didn’t know,” Tony says. “I was busy being dead.”

That gets Loki’s full attention.

“ _Who_?” Loki demands, stalking up to Tony, eyes feral and shadow twisting beneath his feet. “Who would _dare_ —”

“They’re taken care of,” Tony says. “And I’m back, obviously.”

Loki settles back on his heels even as his shadow keeps churning beneath his feet. His eyes narrow, face going thoughtful, considering.

“So, bring me up to speed. What’s up with the alien force? Who were you going to eat?” Tony raises an eyebrow. “You do want me to help, right?”

“Yes.” Loki shakes his head. “Yes, that is why I brought you here.”

***

“So let me get this straight,” Tony says, rubbing his forehead. “In exchange for getting to control you _sort of_ for a period of relative time, the Tesseract was going to help cripple Thanos so you could _eat him_. In the god sense of the word. Meanwhile, you cut a deal with Thanos that you’d help _him_ get to Midgard, which is basically Grand Central for the other realms, so that he could kill _everything_ as some fucked up romantic gesture to Death, the goddess concept. Is that right? And he agreed even though he knows you’re planning to stab him in the back because you and the Tesseract were clearly on same body basis? Did I get all that?”

“Yes.”

“Were you planning on stopping Thanos _before_ or _after_ he killed everyone else and absorbed all that energy?”

“Before.”

Tony crosses his arms.

“ _Probably_ ,” Loki allows with a sniff.

“That’s why you tried to trick me into coming after you right away. Either way, Midgard is going to get fucked sideways and you wanted me off world.”

“That is correct.”

The _worst_ thing is Tony can _follow_ Loki’s reasoning. Tony’s half ready to go mad with the hunger gnawing at him, and he’s pretty sure it’s only an echo of what Loki feels. Though he didn’t see Thanos, he has a good idea that Loki is small fish in a big pond if he needed outside help to be taken seriously. Part of him, the part Tony has classified as not-him (a piece of Loki that filled the space vacated when Loki ate him to bring him back), nearly slavers at the _mere thought_ of consuming Thanos.

Loki wanted to get Tony out of the crossfire, the only sentiment he allowed into his planning; he’s never given a fuck about the rest of the human race. Tony’s known that since he first met him.

“Does Thanos know you ditched yet?” Tony asks.

Loki shakes his head.

“We’re not letting Earth get blown to hell,” Tony says. “That’s final.” Loki looks put out, but Tony plows on before Loki can protest or interrupt. “We figure out a way not to destroy the planet, get you a meal, and, I don’t know, ride off into the sunset like big damn heroes.”

“Why do you care?”

“I happen to like Earth, thanks.” Tony grimaces at the look of disbelief Loki gives him. “Okay, _fine_. It’s where I kick my feet up, and I don’t particularly want to find another planet to do that on. It’s convenient.”

“Your societies are utterly broken and unable to take care of themselves. There are a hundred thousand better places I could take you, if you would let me.”

“I’m going to fix Earth,” Tony says stubbornly, even if the idea of all those other alien planets sounds tempting. “Even if I end up needing to tear it all down. That means you and your _plans_ can’t ruin it before I can try it my way.”

“Very well,” Loki sighs. “How, then, shall we proceed?”

“How long do you have before you need to head back?”

Loki waves a hand, entirely unhelpful as a unit of time, but Tony gets what he means instinctively. He’s asking the wrong question; Loki doesn’t understand and is answering with what he thinks he’s being asked: _eh_. Time is incredibly bendy for Loki, just like space--with the right words, neither make any difference to him.

“Have you tried renegotiating with the Tesseract?”

“It would subsume me,” Loki says flatly. “It is rather unbending on reneged deals.”

“Huh. But would it do that to me?”

Loki’s eyes narrow. Tony grins back at him with his best showman’s smile.


	27. Part 3 - Chp 3

The Tesseract is a great number of things, but perhaps most importantly it is an universal intercise: a physical manifestation of a point that touches all space. Second most importantly, it is a group intelligence with zero concept of ‘mistake’ that has a penchant for subsuming intelligences for reasons entirely its own--though Tony suspects that’s because it’s a great coercive tactic.

At least part of the reason, at any rate.

Interfacing with it--that’s all Tony can think of, _interfacing_ , because there’s nothing _human_  about it--is like having ice slid straight down his spinal cord, his sense of self disoriented so that he immediately knows where north is--or where the Tesseract wants him to think it is. There’s a rush of voices around him, all of them exact and familiar and Tony’s heard them before, hasn’t he? Not through Loki, it’s not that kind of recognition--

( _truth-truth-truth_ )

The room is the same except he can’t see Loki, he has the unnerving sensation the only thing between him and the rest of the universe is his skin, and there’s a…

He blinks.

There’s a woman made of light standing in front of him.

“Loki didn’t say you were a chick,” is the first thing out of his mouth, which as far as diplomatic openers go is _probably_ not the best start.

_Would you prefer otherwise?_ it asks him--at least that’s the top coat, all the background susurrant chatter is still going.

Categorizing, Tony thinks. Categorizing, chanting, prayer or something like it; a host of intelligences all bent towards—

_order_.

Everything in its place.

“Nope, this is good. Say, so you had something to get out of your bargain with Loki.”

_He cannot be trusted._

“He totally can,” which is almost a lie, so Tony loads it full of belief. Loki _can_ be trusted, Tony _absolutely_ trusts him.

(To do what’s best for Loki.)

“Besides, you want Thanos off the table too, don’t you?”

Loki wouldn’t see it, Tony thinks. Loki’s so geared towards tearing down and chaos. The Tesseract seems like exactly the sort to try and present whatever image someone would want to further its own desires. The Tesseract offered Loki a meal that would possibly sate his hunger for a while--clever. Loki would be looking for traps, but that big of a prize means he’d charge right on in despite the risks.

There are voices hissing what sounds suspiciously like _don’t change_ , voices that want _stay the same_ , and Tony is remembering a dream where a not-muzzle was bound and couldn’t destroy the world before it was sufficiently understood.

_We cannot do so without the one you call Loki. He has broken the agreement. We cannot trust him_ the outward facing voice says.

(Do not tell them you caused me to break the agreement.)

“Did you need to be in control for him to consume Thanos? Or were you planning on breaking the agreement yourselves when the time came--two for one deal.” Tony smiles. “See, here’s what I think--I think you don’t care about controlling Loki so much as you cared about having a good seat when Loki went for Thanos’ throat.”

_We are everywhere_ the Tesseract says.

“But everywhere isn’t a good seat, is it? Not if Thanos kills everyone before you can categorize them, and not if Loki exists to keep changing where things are.”

_What do you propose?_ Tony almost wants to say the borganism sounds stiff.

“You help us without piggybacking on either of our consciousnesses, we help you get somewhere people appreciate spatial order.”

_Insufficient_.

“And,” Tony says, holding up a finger, “we trade you a Thanos equivalent conscience that’s gumming up your plans. Not Loki, but he suggested there’s a planet eater that you mentioned when helping him decide who to eat.”

The woman doesn’t say anything, but the tenor of the whispers around him changes; group vote, Tony thinks. What’s best for the spatial hive?

_Agreed_ , the Tesseract says.

There’s another sensation of ice (this time being pulled out), then Tony’s hitting the ground, blinking and shaking his head as he breathes through the sudden press of gravity, mind no longer in the weird internal space of the Tesseract.

“Tony,” Loki says, spear at ready.

Tony throws him a thumbs up.

“I”m good. We’re good. It agreed.”

Loki grabs him by the chin, forcing his head up. Tony looks at him, lets Loki take as long as he needs. A few moments later, the tension eases and a wicked grin splits Loki’s face.

“When do we start?”


	28. Part 3 - Chp 4

Loki takes the Tesseract with him back to Thanos to get started on his half; the issue of eye colour is a quick illusion away--not a true shape-change, and so the only way Loki can get away with it.

Tony, meanwhile, gets dropped rather unceremoniously back in bed, lips still swollen from one last fierce kiss.

It’s not a good plan they’ve got because there’s so much that can go horribly wrong, yet…

Tony feels _alive_. Absolutely. This is exactly where he wants to be, the thick of things, the spaces between peace and everything going to hell in a hand basket, that narrow space to manipulate and shape before the wave breaks.

Loki feels it, too, is all fire and spark and laughter because it wasn’t the lack of safety that got him before--it was the idea of being consumed, or worse, and having what appeared to be no options out. Except Tony, and Tony doesn’t miss that what brought them together was Loki’s need again.

Anyone else might have been able to help him, but none of them are who Loki turns to when he needs--just like there’s nowhere else Tony goes when he dies. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere but Tony’s content to let it lie.

He’s got Loki, knows it the way he knows his own name, and he doesn’t feel angry or jilted anymore when he considers the way Loki tries to pretend Tony doesn’t mean anything to him; the god gives himself away in everything else he does.

***

“Where the hell have you been?” Barton asks when Tony’s on his way out the door to go visit Jane and give her some information she’s going to need for her Einstein-Rosen bridge.

“Uh, hello? My room?” Tony thinks. Loki said it was Tuesday, and he might be crap with time but yesterday was definitely Monday.

“Not for a fucking week! We’ve been looking all over for you!”

Ah. _Tuesday_. He resists the urge to start laughing at the utter shit Loki’s been.

“I had a midlife crisis. I died a week ago, remember? I drowned? We had schawarma afterwards.”

Barton just looks at him.

“It was him, wasn’t it?”

“Not likely.”

“Look, dude, I’m not going to rat you out if it was, but you’ve got to be fucking careful. You can’t just let him whisk you off for a week when we’re in the middle of trying to plan for your dumb alien invasion that your dumb soulmate has decided sounds like a great time.”

“Why not, exactly? Who else is going to convince him it’s a bad idea? Thor?”

That gets a brow raise, and Tony really can’t stop from smirking at him this time.

“I know what I’m about, Barton, but thanks for the concern.”

“You’re in over your head!” Barton calls after him when he gets in the elevator. Tony just waves as the doors close.

***

Jane is, not surprisingly, ecstatic.

“Oh my god Tony, this is _incredible_ , where did you even get this--this is--I mean, if it works, and it looks like it will, then it’s going to totally change, well, _everything_ , I can’t believe this—”

“You think it will work?” Tony asks, just to be sure.

“I mean, I can’t be sure until I study it some more and try, but it looks like it will. This is _amazing_.”

“Great,” Tony says. “I’ll call Bruce up and we’ll science. Sleepover, I’ll order takeout.”

***

The key thing is, Tony needs to make sure that he isn’t in New York. He also wants Bruce out of it, because he knows how much Bruce hates Hulking out.

So New Mexico.

He’d say he feels bad about using Jane, but he really, seriously doesn’t.

***

Right on cue, Wednesday Loki shows up with a small strike force, and then vanishes--a quick and clear demonstration that the Tesseract can act as a portal for a larger force, if necessary.

Just like that, all the timetables change and top of the list: find Loki.

Tony just makes sure to keep a straight face. Wounded, shocked. Whatever--everyone is _fine_. They’ve got this.


	29. Part 3 - Chp 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double post today; no post Sunday. See you Monday!

“You’re benching me,” Tony says.

“We discussed this—”

“Without me there, I might add—”

“--and we think it would be for the best if you sat this one out.”

“Okay.”

Steve looks wary--which is smart really, Tony will give him that.

“Okay,” Steve repeats.

“Yup. Okay. Sure.” Tony grins, gets up, and walks out.

***

“Are you going to answer that?” Jane asks curiously.

Tony glances at the phone.

“Nope.” At the confusion on Jane’s face. “The team decided it would be best to bench me since Loki’s my soulmate.”

“So you aren’t answering their calls.”

Tony grins.

“It’s going to be about Loki. So no, I’m not, because I’m sitting this one out.”

“How do you know?”

“Call it a hunch.”

***

It’s a lot more than a hunch, in truth. Tony and Loki went over the general outline of what they were going to, and Loki’s an almost permanent presence in Tony's headspace these days. Tony might not know the _exacts_ , but he’s got enough for educated guesses.

If he’s right, Loki should be securing himself the things he needs for the Tesseract portal, as well as making some more statements as to the extent the Avengers really are not equipped to deal with him, let alone Thanos.

Not that they know about Thanos, but hey, all things in time.

In any case, that puts Loki in only a couple places; knowing Loki’s ( _Tony’s_ ) flair for the dramatic, he’s willing to bet Loki went with Stuttgart because opera houses have all kinds of pizzazz.

He just hopes people were smart enough to get out of the damn way.

***

“Tony—”

“Nope, I’ve been benched, can’t help, just a wealthy genius trying to get to his workshop, thanks.”

“Dammit Tony, stop acting like a child!”

“Talk to the team. It sounds like you guys had a vote.”

***

They send Bruce to try to talk to him.

“I told him this wouldn’t work,” Bruce sighs.

“Well at least one of you has a clue.”

“Are you even curious?”

“Ah-ah, leading question. You should leave the spy stuff to Natasha.”

Bruce smiles, just a little.

“Anything else?” Tony prompts.

***

Predictably, Steve shows up not too terribly long after Tony’s continued refusal to talk anything even _possibly_ Loki or team related.

“We shouldn’t have taken you off the team.”

“Nope, you shouldn’t have.”

Steve, being Steve, doesn’t even react to Tony’s smarm.

“We need you on the team for this.”

“About damn time. Where did you decided to stick Loki?” He rolls his eyes at Steve’s surprise. “Did you really think I haven’t been keeping an eye on what you’ve been doing?”

***

Really, it’s all going _too well_.

“What the hell was that?” Tony demands as the ground lurches under his feet. It sounds like every alarm possible has just gone off.

“I’ve been with you!” Steve says, but Tony isn’t listening for Steve, he’s listening for Jarvis--who isn’t responding.

Then the power cuts.

Silence settles on the building. The only light is the dim glow of the arc reactor in Tony’s chest; not even the emergency lights are coming on.

“This,” Tony says, “shouldn’t happen. There’s multiple redundancies just to _keep_ this kind of thing from—”

“Change of plans,” Loki gasps, appearing in front of Tony wild-eyed and pale. He grabs both of them, adds a quick “Close your eyes”, and then they all three vanish at once.


	30. Part 3 - Chp 6

They land, somewhat unceremoniously, in the abandoned SHIELD base. Tony doesn’t land on anyone, which he’s going to count as a victory considering how shaken Loki still is and all the others who had been at the tower still picking themselves up off the floor. A quick headcount reveals there’s only a few of them: him, Steve, Thor, Bruce.

“Where are the others?” Tony asks Loki. He gets a blank look, realizes that the jittery nervous isn’t just _Tony_ over the Tower and Jarvis both going down; Loki’s mentally scattered, flung out as wide as he can to turn over and plot and try to be  _not frightened_. “Hey,” Tony says, putting his hands on Loki’s face. Loki jerks back, eyes focusing on Tony and taking a few long seconds to process that it’s Tony. “Where are the others?”

“These were all in your Tower.” Loki looks torn between telling Tony to unhand him and pulling him closer, so Tony makes up his mind for him and lets go, turning around to survey the others.

They… don’t exactly look _pleased_. Steve in particular has his patriotic jaw clench going.

Tony decides to ignore it in favour of assessing what they don’t have still.

“Where’s the Tesseract?” he asks Loki.

Loki makes a noise. It’s not a good noise. Tony does not like the noise one bit, or how Loki’s face twists when he makes it.

(Loki is actually frightened--or as close as he ever gets; it makes Tony nauseous.)

“He knows,” Loki says, very softly, so soft Tony isn’t entirely sure that he said it outloud, that it isn’t soul level knowledge, except for Thor, who either is a hell of a lip reader or _did_ hear Loki--Thor who immediately asks, “Who knows?”

“Thanos,” Tony says, mouth dry. “ _Shit_ , we need to get to Jane!”

***

Tony hasn’t actually _seen_ Thanos, but the impression he’s gotten from Loki’s hunger and excessive caution combined with the Tesseract viewing him on the same level as a planet eater (no, _really_ ) has made it pretty clear that if they’re going to do this, they did _not_ want to get noticed.

At least not until they had the upper hand.

Tony shelves finding out how Thanos realized for later, makes getting to Jane before she tests out the bridge maker the priority--even above the everyone else’s narrowed eyed looks about him clearly knowing what Loki’s been up to. 

“Is he here?” Tony asks Loki.

“No, but he will be soon.”

“Great. Peachy.” He closes his eyes the few moments while he gets zipped around, then desert heat knocks him in the face and he takes off at a run to catch up to Jane.

“ _Jane_!”

Jane blinks, notices Loki, and tenses.

“Jane, look, I don’t have a ton of time to explain, but no bridge test today and we kind of need you to come with us.”

“Tony, I’m pretty sure that’s _Loki_ , and last I checked he was _not_ a good guy.”

“He’s--fuck it, he’s _complicated_ , the important thing is that we have something a lot worse than him on the way and if you open the Einstein-Rosen bridge it’s pretty likely that the bigger, nastier thing would hitch a ride and _it_ doesn’t have a soulmate that’s made it clear we aren’t wrecking Earth.”

“Just invading it.”

“It’s a ploy. Loki is--was working with him on a temporary basis to double cross--look it’s complicated, and I’m going to have to explain it to Steve when we get back. Can we _please_ just get your equipment and you to not here?” Tony gives her his best puppy eyes.

“I promise that I will not harm you,” Loki adds, and he doesn’t even use his menacing voice for it, _bonus_.

“I have a taser,” Jane informs him. “Alright. But if we don’t go straight to the others—”

“We will.”

***

They do. Tony counts it a sign of Loki’s returning control as it’s not nearly so rough a landing this time. He also counts himself lucky that they are not at the Tower because otherwise he’d probably be getting locked somewhere _nevermind_ that he could pretty easily get out again what with building the damn thing.

“You, over there,” Tony says, pointing to an empty space opposite where Bruce, Steve, and Thor have gathered and were talking before they got back. Loki shoots him a look, but he goes--and then smirks a little as Tony gets himself leaned against the desk he’d pointed at so that he’s between Loki and the others. It’s not a nice grin, but fuck it, Tony’s played diplomacy under worse circumstances before.

Not that he can remember any right now.

“I can totally explain,” Tony says right as Steve opens his mouth. “Just let me explain.”

He hopes Banner just is green from the sudden trip and not for other reasons, this space is way too small for that.

“I would hope so,” Steve says, crossing his arms and leveling Tony with a look. Another life, Tony would be drowning under guilt, but as it is he has to resist rolling his eyes.

“When I did that drowning thing the other week, it did something to Loki--namely help him because he was definitely under some serious heavy duty mind control shit. The force was already on its way to Earth then, he was just sort of some extra baggage they came across.” Tony keeps talking before Thor can open his mouth and ruin anything. “Vision quest theoretical nonsense, you can ask Bruce for the details, because it worked even if I only remember bits and pieces. _Unfortunately_ , this meant Loki’s mind-control person isn’t exactly happy. Loki found me, we formed a plan to get him out of danger without raising suspicion _and_ so we could take out the threat if it showed up on Earth.”

“And how’s that working out for you?” Barton asks drily.

Tony grimaces.

“You seriously expect me to believe all that?” Steve asks.

“Hey, you were the ones who voted me off the team before I could tell you.”

That’s not winning him any awards, but he also doesn’t care. It’s got enough of the truth in it that it’ll hold up, just enough that Thor’s apparently decided to keep his opinions to himself, just closed his mouth and sat back, watching Tony with a frankly uncomfortable scrutiny.

“You didn’t _tell them_?” Loki says from behind him, acidic and bewildered.

Tony whirls around, hands up.

“Hey, they didn’t want my help.”

Loki is outright glaring.

“What use is a plan if you don’t keep to your half, Stark?”

“Ouch, you hurt me. Look--Loki, wait—”

Nope, there he goes. Tony gets his face composed before he turns around, because he was hoping Loki would help play along but that was _perfect_.

“Uh, so,” he says, turning around and rubbing the back of his head, “I guess we’re even?”

Jane is the only one who looks at all sympathetic, but he might be imagining that.

***

Jane is sympathetic. Kind of. And he’s also temporarily banished from planning while the other three figuring out what they want to do next, with the occasional flat interjection from Loki, who is giving all appearances of being pissed with him.

He helps her resetup her equipment, since they’re going to end up needing it anyway, and lets himself get lost in the rhythm of assembly instead of trying to eavesdrop on the others.

“That’s really tough luck,” Jane says.

“Hmm?”

“That whole god thing for a soulmate. And one like Loki, too.”

Tony frowns at her.

“Are you speculating, you have one, or…?”

Jane flushes.

“I just read. Sometimes.”

Tony grins, but he doesn’t let himself laugh at her.

“Jane Foster, into trashy stereotypical soulmate stories are you?”

“Sometimes. Like you never looked before you met him.”

“Maybe once or twice. Don’t worry, kiddo, you’ll find yours.”

Jane snorts.

“I have more important things to do, they’ll need to find me.”

“That’s the spirit,” Tony says. “Science before souls.”

Jane frowns.

“Well, not quite like that,” Tony agrees, and then they both start laughing--a little hysterical, sure, but it’s tense and they need drinks and they’re rebuilding a machine that should basically make a portal between impossibly far distances in an abandoned SHIELD basement while an impossibly powerful Titan bears down on Earth.

They’re _totally_ allowed, despite any looks to the contrary.


	31. Part 3 - Chp 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bored tony gets himself into trouble could basically be the alternate title of this fic

New York--or at least Tony’s corner of it--is on lockdown. There’s been plenty of response to that initial strike force to keep them contained, but it’s caused a media storm since Tony didn’t even show up to defend his own tower. The fact the tower is still off isn’t exactly making Tony happy either, even if he can’t personally show up at the moment.

“What did they _do_?” he grumbles, but there’s no one around to hear him. It’d been decided that Steve needs to rally the troops--he’s good at that sort of thing--and Loki has gone with him as a show of good faith. Jane and Bruce are sleeping--he thinks, he’s not about to poke Bruce to find out--while Thor is busy getting some help from back home, wherever that is.

Which means he’s bored and restless.

He starts poking at Jane’s possible teleporter. She doesn’t like when he calls it that, but considering what it does, it’s _totally_ a teleporter. They’re supposed to be using it to show up in the middle of the coming force and lay waste--in theory catching them by surprise--but Tony’s not sure they're still going to do that; it’s a relic of the plan from _before_ Thanos had realized that Loki wasn’t actually under the Tesseract’s control anymore.

Better to have it ready than not if they need it, especially since they don’t have the Tesseract.

Still, it won't hurt to take it on a test drive. Tony’s worked with Jane enough and helped put it back together--he knows how to adjust the coordinates. And it’s not like he has a suit or anything; a quick jaunt to the Tower, see if he can’t get it powered back up, grab the suit with the external battery if he can’t….

***

The Tower is dark, which he totally expected and has his own personal nightlight for.

It is also _cold_. His breath fogs the air, immediate goose bumps all over his arms and chill down his spine, and he really wants to know how the hell this is even possible considering that he knows for a fact New York is a miserable and humid ninety some odd Fahrenheit outside.

On the plus side, Jane’s teleporter works, even if he is having to walk down a zillion flights of stairs so he can get the suit and make life easier on him with repairs.

Also, he doesn’t want to be unarmoured any longer than he needs to be. Definitely not. It half feels like the darkness is watching him, which is frankly absurd. He feels half like a bird, head craning every which way to try and catch sight of everything around him, nearly pulling muscles at glimpses in his peripheral.

“Get it together, Tony,” he mutters at himself. He hasn’t ever been afraid of the dark, and he’s not starting now. He’s just unsettled, that’s all.

There’s a hiss--he thinks there’s a hiss--but there’s nothing at all behind him.

He hurries a bit faster.

***

Because he’s not an idiot lacking all common sense (who maybe had ended up locked out of his workshop once before because of this), he built in a way to get into the workshop if all power was down. He doesn’t have it marked on any schematics--way too high a risk of someone using it for the wrong reasons--but he knows where it is, and a bit of force later he’s successfully in his workshop again.

The only reason he’s breathing heavy is because it takes force to open that partition. That’s it.

(There is _totally_ something in the dark with him.)

It’s not luck (it’s luck, and he knows it) that the suit powers up and slides on like the second skin it is. He immediately feels worlds better to not be quite so immediately edible; better still when he hears Jarvis in his ear.

“You should give warning before you cut power, sir,” Jarvis says, utterly disapproving.

“Good to hear you too,” Tony says. “Any idea what happened?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Shame. Let’s get to work.”

The easiest thing to do is going to be to go outside and check the line to the arc reactor he’s got underwater--as much as it shouldn’t be possible, it’d be the easiest way to cut the power to the Tower if the backup ones were offline.

(It’s a bonus it’s going to get him out of this creepy darkness.)

Except, he realizes not too much later, he _can’t_ get out. As much as he tries, doors that lead out just flat out don’t open.

“Jarvis, full power to repulsors,” he says--surely he can take out a window and get loose.

The blast richottes off the glass like it’s anything but, knocks over a clatter of way too loud metal, and then everything goes silent.

“That’s not good.”

“No, sir, it is not.” Jarvis pauses, then adds, “Perhaps the windows by the bar would work better?”

They don’t.

Maybe Thanos was only part of why Loki so shaken when he showed up to get them out of the tower.

***

“So let me get this straight,” Tony says, studying the readings that Jarvis is throwing up on the screen. “As far as you can tell, the world _doesn’t exist_ outside of the Tower.”

“That is correct.” Jarvis sounds pretty displeased by this, not that Tony can blame him. If it’s true, that at least explains why everything inside is so _strange_. 

“That doesn’t explain why I can’t break the windows.” Tony paces around the bar, staring at the windows. It looks like New York at night is just outside, which is frankly wrong, since it was day when he came in and supposedly there isn’t actually anything out there. “Any signs of the creepy shadow thing I keep seeing?”

“No, sir. To all appearances, you are the only living organism in the tower.”

Tony is pretty sure that Jarvis thinks he’s lost his marbles; he can’t say he’s not sure he _hasn’t_.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s play ball. Let’s assume that the insides are all that exist. I’m going to bet…” he pauses, considering. This feels _familiar_. “I’m going to bet we’re going about this the wrong way and that this--at least right now--isn’t in real space.”

“Sir,” Jarvis says in this tone of voice that suggests he’s both seriously concerned for Tony and also tired of putting up with this nonsensical situation.

“Hear me out.” He pauses again. “Hear me out. We’re here, this isn’t real space. It’s a… metaphor.” He frowns, words on the tip of his tongue. He’s been somewhere like this before, but it doesn’t make sense and isn’t coming easily. “I’m going to do something stupid.”

“At last, _something_ which makes sense.”

“Can it. Hey, big and scary! I know you’re out there crawling around the dark! Stop sulking!”

Nothing happens, which, okay, fair enough. It’s also not totally pitch black in here minus his reactor light, so it’s entirely possible the thing that’s been following him around isn’t actually here. At least not in this room.

“Let’s get somewhere darker,” Tony says, ignoring the way his stomach sinks.

( _Down and down and down_.)

***

“Are you _serious_? You didn’t see that?!”

Tony’s voice might be high, but he really doesn’t care at this point. He’s exhausted--mentally exhausted, bone weary chasing back and forth for what feels like hours now. The stairs feel like they don’t _end_ , narrowing and widening almost sickeningly, all of which he knows shouldn’t be possible because he _built_ the damn place. But it keeps happening because for all Jane’s teleporter latched onto this as the Tower, it _isn’t_.

Or maybe it is. May it's a metaphor for the tower. He doesn’t know, and the exhaustion and not-knowing are starting to morph into some serious levels of pissed off.

“Come _out_ already,” he shouts, throwing a repulsor shot in a fit of temper.

For a moment, the glow lights up a creature vast and shadow and many-headed as it screams and recoils, foot after foot of coiled muscle undulating and drawing back, teeth easily as big as Tony’s forearm gleaming in the light and spit shining as it slides off them.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Tony says then starts running.


	32. Part 3 - Chp 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we will _totally_ be finding out more about what the fuck is with loki here and all that.

“You still can’t see it?” Tony demands, though it comes out in between breaths. The thing is tearing after him, he can hear it, and a glance back proves that it’s still right there as it chooses that moment to screech at him again revealing fangs and venom and a pink maw ready to swallow him whole or die trying.

“No,” Jarvis says.

“Okay, time for second stupid thing then.”

“Sir, might I recommend—”

Tony stops dead, turns around, and fires another shot. The beast recoils, twists around, but it’s so big there’s no way Tony’s missing--but that’s not what he’s trying to do.

“ _You aren’t real_ ,” he tells it, trying to believe it. “Jarvis can’t pick you up in any readings which means you. Aren’t. _Real_.”

The shot doesn’t connect. Tony doesn’t see where it goes, but it doesn’t matter.

(Words are power here.)

_It doesn’t connect._

He nearly victory punches, but the creature maneuvers around to watch him, antlered and fanged and he might have managed to convince himself for a moment that it wasn’t real, but it’s a lot harder when it’s flattening its necks in preparation of striking with—

“Loki?” Tony says, because he knows the colour of all the many sets of eyes watching him. It goes to strike, but he doesn’t think for a second that it’s real--Loki won’t hurt him.

He knows it with the certainty of dying.

He’s standing on nothing. There’s no tower, no creature trying to play at Loki, just utter darkness all around him, just like Jarvis has been saying all this time. Nothing.

“It looked like Loki,” he says to Jarvis. He frowns; feels like that should mean something, but he isn’t sure what. He isn’t frightened of Loki, hasn’t been since he died, and it makes no sense that whatever this space is would tip its hand so badly….

Maybe they didn’t know. It. Whatever this space is. He’s not sure. Glancing around, already the darkness is beginning to change, a form starting to rise out of it. Another space, another playground.

Tony can’t say he’s impressed.

“I just wanted to hear you again Jarvis, is that so much to ask?” he complains, watching the pieces come together.

***

The motif repeats. Tight spaces and dark and endless hallways, endless stairways--Tony assumes, because he’s not running. Every time, it comes back to facing the monster down, however it chooses to appear, and every time it’s the eyes that break the spell.

It’s never anymore real than the last time; frankly, Tony’s starting to get a bit bored.

_Except_.

This is a puzzle. It’s not just keeping him trapped, though he’s been talking over with Jarvis various ways to try to get out--saying that he _was_ out nearly did the trick before the space closed back down with a flare of blue so bright it may as well have been white. That--that’s what’s got him tipped off, frankly, because he knows that blue and he knows the green of those eyes and he knows the one thing Loki will never do is harm him.

It wasn’t Thanos--at least not entirely. Loki panicked to get them out from inside the Tesseract, or whatever it is this space is.

(But he knows that blue-white glow.)

In the process, he gave something up.

(There’s always a price.)

Tony stands his ground as the scene plays out again, paying attention to his peripheral and the subtle movement there. It’s a hallway again, this time in a rickety old house that belongs more to a B-movie horror flick than his subconscious. Whether it’s the Tesseract or this particular piece of Loki, all these scenes have been laughably out of touch with actual humanity--it’s made it easier and easier with every pass to not flinch first.

“Really, what are the chances that I always end up where he needs me?” he complains while he waits for this to hurry up and play out.

“Well, sir, as his soulmate, I would dare venture one hundred percent.”

“Haha, very funny.” He glances over his shoulder, trying to give off impatience in case it hurries things up at all. “Can you get on with it?”

One of the heads gives him a baleful look while the rest try to go for menacing. The venom is a nice touch really, all acidic and burning through the ground. Finally, he’s starting to get bored of these things too--a bored Loki is a dangerous Loki.

At least Tony hopes so.

“Here’s a thought,” Tony says, “Let’s leave.”

There’s a growl. Tony turns around to face him, relieved that this time the damn thing doesn’t just vanish and take off again. This whole process has just been overly tedious--the Tesseract has so little damn creativity in trying to consume him or subsume him, so pettily focused on having a part of Loki that’s been bought and conscripted fuck Tony over that it hasn’t realized the problem with that is _Loki_.

Maybe the rest of the Tesseract hive mind is good with the endless and monotonous, is totally striving for it, but even this quiet nightmare of a part of him remembers too much of more to be satisfied.

“Let’s make a deal.”

Almost immediately the scene starts to fall apart, a sudden hike in attention and pressure. Someone isn’t happy about that; Tony just makes sure to talk faster, closing the distance between the two of them and releasing the catches for one of his gauntlets.

Most of this isn’t real, but Tony’s real enough that the skin contact is going to matter.

He’s something to hold onto, and he holds his hand out for just that as the shade starts to fade. A clawed hand grabs for his.

“You’re real,” Tony tells him and doesn’t flinch when the claws dig into his skin, just keeps his eyes on one set of green. “I know where you belong, and it isn’t here. I’ll take you back to the whole when we get out.”

_How?_ It’s not spoken, it’s all in the eyes--this shade hasn’t spoken once, just growled and hissed and snarled and tried over and over to frighten him without words because words weren’t something that he’s been allowed. Loki didn’t give up his words when he left this part of himself here in payment to get them all out.

“I believe in you,” Tony says simply, tugging just enough to haul the still fading shade closer, for claws the Tesseract is desperately trying to make unreal again to draw blood. “An offering.” He pulls his hand away gently and offers the freshly cut skin up.

There are dozens of eyes focused, transforming, until there’s only one set of eyes, until there’s only a great and vast beast with only one head and one set of antlers focused on him, eyes greedy and green and fire underneath it all.

“Loki,” Tony says, “take us home.”


	33. Part 3 - Chp 9

The pulls--steps _between_ \--before were all quick; not instantaneous, but _sure_. Tony feels like taffy for an immeasurable amount of time, almost painful; opening his eyes just gives him a sick and twisted view of things stretched out, not the blurred and shadow place like normal. He closes his eyes again, swallows, and focuses a touch more strongly on the fact he knows that Loki--even just a shade of a slice of Loki--is cleverer and more capable in all his manifold than the Tesseract trying to put everything in its space.

He _knows_ the moment they’re real again. _He’s_ real. He staggers on his feet, blinks in the sudden light, hears the rush and hiss of… _everything_.

He’s inside the Tower. Still no power but there’s daylight streaming through the windows.

“Jarvis?” he asks cautiously.

“Pleasantly real, sir.” There’s a list of data already scrolling on the screen, things like temperature and energy signatures and the weather in New York. Tony breathes a sigh of relief.

“That’s great. It’s great to be back. I should have never—”

His teeth rattle as he hits the floor, blood in his mouth as he bites his own tongue. His still trying to blink the stars out of his eyes when his faceplate and then the rest of the helmet are ripped off in short order and he realizes it’s not that his chest feels weird, it’s that Loki is sitting on top of him, wide-eyed and pale and hands already cupping the sides of Tony’s face, staring at him as if he’s a ghost.

“Hey,” Tony says before swallowing his own blood.

Loki just stares.

“Do you think—”

“The light in your chest,” Loki says. He sounds dazed, but even so that has Tony shoving at him to sit up and get a good look because he’s not—

It’s green. Sort of. It’s white green more than anything, but it’s _definitely_ not the colour that it was.

“Jarvis, is there anything weird with my reactor?” he demands, momentarily putting Loki on hold.

“It does not appear so, though the suit has limited capabilities to determine such.”

Tony glances at Loki. He has a feeling if it was bad--at least obviously so--Loki would be reacting a bit differently. As it is, he looks… well, he looks like shit, now that Tony’s actually looking. His hair is a wet and tangled mess, he’s thinner than Tony’s ever seen him, even counting when Tony first laid eyes on him. There’s dark circles under his eyes and he looks like if he wasn’t so fixated on Tony he’d fall asleep where he’s straddling Tony’s lap. He’s also utterly nude.

“Hey,” Tony says, suddenly awkward. “I’m alright.”

Loki gives him a scathing look; tries, but it’s too tired, too drained, to manage anything threatening or last more than a moment.

“How long have I been away?”

“I don’t know.” Loki shrugs with one shoulder, hands creeping up to rest on Tony’s face again, thumbs running along his cheeks.

Tony frowns; he distinctly remembers that Loki looked healthier than this when he went with Steve.

“What happened to you?” Tony asks. “Was there an attack while you were with Steve, did—”

“You were _gone_.” Loki’s voice breaks on the word, eyes closing and visibly recomposing himself. His hands slide so they cup the back of Tony’s neck instead, and Tony realizes he’s trembling. “Gone, gone, I— _Why_? What foolish thought entered your head that you decided to _go back_ after I brought you away, I barely managed _before_ , _have I not told you enough_?”

“I was here. Well. Kind of here.”

“ _You did not exist!_ ” Loki shouts, fingers digging into Tony’s hair, eyes snapping open and feral and yes, he’s shaking, full-on trauma shaking. Tony doesn’t have the first idea what to do with trauma shaking, or trauma for that matter, but he gets his hands on Loki’s forearms, rubs down them lightly. The effect’s ruined by the armour, but Loki stops gripping his hair so tight even if the shaking doesn’t stop. Loki closes his eyes, leaning his forehead against Tony’s, breath ragged. “You did not exist,” he repeats with a whisper.

“I… did. I thought I did.” Tony pauses. “Loki, how long have you….” He trails off, not entirely sure what it is he needs to ask, but there’s something cold sliding between his ribs, slithering up his throat, a creeping realization of _you are everything_ repeated again and _again_ beginning to take a horrible, awful shape.

“I do not exist without you,” Loki says dully. “I cannot.”

“But you’re here now,” Tony says; it’s desperate, he knows it’s desperate--he’s not even really assessing, just trying to grasp for purchase, to fit his head around the fact that for all Loki is vast beyond belief he’s—

“You exist.” A spasm wracks Loki's too thin body.

\--he’s still _chained_ in such an extreme way to one being, one _soul_. That when Loki and Thor say everything they do, in fact, mean _everything_ , that the actual ceasing of Tony’s soul in the universe that Loki can manipulate means that _Loki_ vanishes—

“You’re here,” Tony says. He closes his eyes, wrapping his arms around Loki in a sudden desperate need to verify it, pressing his face into Loki’s neck, because what if Loki _hadn’t_ come back, what if Tony had been gone too long, _what if_ — “I believe in you, you’re _here_ , you’re _real_.”

Loki laughs, dry and cracked and broken.

***

Tony doesn’t particularly want to let go. He doesn’t want to talk to the others, doesn’t want to hear what happened when Loki… _ceased_ , doesn’t want to deal with the endless questions. He doesn’t want to deal with anything that isn’t Loki as real and solid right now.

It’s funny; he never thought he’d realize the absence of Loki, and now it terrifies him more than the fact _he_ had stopped existing in this universe in the first place.

At some point, they end up sprawled on the floor, Tony making his way out of the suit. Loki doesn’t squirm or claw at him, just watches through half-lidded eyes with hands that never stray too far from Tony’s skin while Tony works the suit off.

He doesn’t have any sort of plan, any direction, just stares at Loki and notes the way the light of his reactor slides over his skin--white-green and ghostly, and without thinking he bends down to trail kisses after the shadows on Loki’s stomach. The light moves, so Tony moves with it, following the ever-changing shadows and tracing his hands over Loki’s form like he might be able to hold him together by sheer force of will.

( _Why not?_ )

Loki’s eyes get hazy, blissed as Tony worships the flesh he’s in, laces a hand with one of Tony’s and Tony hangs tight, refuses to let him go at all. Just breaths Loki’s name into his skin, kisses belief and faith and _hope_ along all the lines of his bones until Loki’s back is arching, toes curling and mouth caught open on Tony’s name.

It’s slow, slow as Tony can stand to be, slow as Loki will let him go once Tony’s swallowed him down. Tony closes his eyes, savours the taste and weight of him, holds him down and swallows the rest when Loki falls apart.

Eventually, he does it all over again, then again. Starts at touches and kisses and pressing the belief into him, slow and languid, until there are tears at the corners of Loki’s eyes, an incoherent slur on his tongue as Tony swallows, insensate babbles that reveal a little of the universe and shiver down Tony’s spine, all of it a promise and a pulse that he knows in his soul, that he nearly _lost_.

When he falls asleep, Loki looks the way he should--lean, face relaxed into an easy smirk, the full erotic flush of life staining his edges ruddy and near glowing. Godlike, eyes inhuman with glitter and gleam and intelligence as sharp as his smile.


	34. Part 3 - Chp 10

“Hey,” Tony says when he and Loki arrive back to current headquarters. It’s more crowded, messier than he remembers it being--he’d forgotten, somewhere, that they were in the middle of planning a counter to Thanos.

All the chatter dies, every eye in the room focusing on them.

“Tony,” and that’s Barton, eyes flicking between him and Loki. “You’re supposed to be—”

Tony shrugs.

“When have I ever done what I’m supposed to?” he asks.

***

There’s debriefings--not as thorough as they should be, but then everyone saw Thor’s reaction to seeing Loki and they’re strapped for time. Thor’s been very insistent that if he weren’t actually Tony, Loki wouldn’t exist.

Tony really wishes he’d stop, if he’s honest, no matter how much more he’d get interrogated.

***

“I saw it,” Barton tells him. “A few people did. Steve doesn’t really want to talk about it, most people don’t; it was fucking shit. Got this look on his face, then he just exploded into gold--”

“Do you need to tell me?” Tony interrupts, eyes instinctively tracking Loki where he just entered the opposite side of the large room. Watches him wander through projects and pieces of plan, the way he scowls at Thor, the imperiousness of it all, like a few days ago he didn’t just cease.

“Nah,” Barton says. “Probably better if you don’t know, really.”

Tony couldn’t agree more.

***

They can’t stop touching. Incidental things. Maybe they could, if they tried, but Tony has no inclination and Loki doesn’t seem to either. He knows it’s gotten a few comments, how one can’t enter a room without the other showing up five minutes later under other pretenses, and another five minutes they’ll be next to each other and bickering and absolutely not subtle at all with the ways their hands brush or they bump into each other.

It’s grounding.

Those touches are probably the only reason Tony hasn’t ground his teeth to powder, because every conversation comes back to the approaching force, to Thanos.

( _If he destroys you_ a voice hisses, and it nearly sounds like Loki, but it’s not, not quite, is a little more feral, a little more snake hiss; it doesn’t matter, because that’s the problem, isn’t it, Tony’s vulnerable, edible to things that scale like Thanos and the Tesseract, and he _can’t_ let Loki vanish. Not again, not ever. _What if he doesn’t come back?_ )

He eventually hunts Thor down when the hiss grows too tight in his chest, just enough to finally drive him away from Loki for the scant time he can deal with it.

“When I go, he’s going to go. But he’s not meant to go until the end of things; he has to make it, doesn’t he?”

Thor hesitates.

“ _Doesn’t he_?” Tony demands.

“Not even fate is set in stone,” Thor says.

“It doesn’t matter. Is that what you’re saying? That this end of the world stuff doesn’t even give any sort of guarantee?”

“I do not know of it failing to happen.”

“Right. Thanks.”

***

“What troubles you?” Loki purrs, the bed dipping beneath his weight as he wraps his arms around Tony from behind. He noses at Tony’s neck; a little of the tension eases out of Tony as he leans back into him even as he grows more certain of what he needs to do.

(When he dies, he has no control over his soul, not really; he knows that it seeks Loki out, knows that it’s safe in Loki’s spaces, but that doesn’t rule being stolen or getting bored or intercepted before he even gets there. All he needs to do is take out that step, the uncertainty between his lives.)

“I don’t want to die,” Tony says. The words sound strange in the air; they don’t sound like his. He remembers the weight of guilt and trying to pay the world back, the constant suicidal drive to undo the legacy he’d built stone by stone. He wonders a little where it went; not that he does not want to fix the world, but the tenor of it is so different--he plans to be around to see it the whole way through.

Even if he’s changed since finding Loki, he’s the one who’s Tony Stark, he’s the soul Loki is tied to and who is tied to Loki. Dying and nonexistence don’t change that.

They’re still his words, no matter if they don’t sound like him who used to be.

“I should hope not,” Loki says lightly, but there’s a strain of uncertainty underneath.

“Can you fix that? If we get you Thanos or whoever, can you fix that?”

Loki goes very still and very quiet. Tony waits him out.

“The plan,” Loki says quietly, “does not currently involve that.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

More silence. Loki’s surprised; he pulls away a little, and Tony uses the movement to twist around to look at him. It’s not just surprise--there’s genuine conflict on his face, torn between two entirely different urges.

“I should not,” Loki says.

Tony waits, because it’s not what he asked and Loki knows it.

“I could,” Loki says slowly, “steal it for you, if I had that level of power. It would not be difficult.”

Tony nods.

“Okay.”

He doesn’t say anything else, but he can see the idea eating at Loki the rest of the day, in his eyes and a low tension in the back of Tony’s own head whenever they see each other. Where usually no one needs to get Loki’s attention--he’s been one of the sharper minds working at the issue--several times Tony has to nudge him or someone has to repeat what they said for him. Tony watches the idea burrow beneath his skin and a voice that sounds a little like Loki but hardly is at all hisses _good_.


	35. Part 3 - Chp 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> double update today

“Everything looks good,” Bruce tells him, a human voice to confirm what Tony’s already found out from Jarvis. Other than what seems like a cosmetic change, the arc reactor is physically exactly the same.

“Thanks,” Tony says with a smile. “Never hurts to double check.”

“Any theories on why it changed?” Bruce is curious--honestly curious, and he won’t let the information go to anyone else or use it against Tony.

“Not sure,” Tony says because he at least can avoid lying outright.

***

Theory: the reason the reactor is green is the sliver of Loki that followed him out decided to make it home. It would explain the voice that hisses thoughts in the middle of his own--not quite Tony’s, not quite Loki’s, some strange feral thing that seems intent only on Tony’s survival.

It has him wondering if he was wrong, or leapt too readily to an explanation. If Loki exists where Tony does and Tony goes to a new place that registers as nonexistence--for all intents and purposes a separate universe--then does he bring Loki with him? Does he cause Loki’s creation no matter what universe he’s in, suited to the environment?

Tony did need a way out and he’s always been very good at building them.

Or maybe it’s a mixture--the Tesseract had started to categorize Loki and what it had responded when exposed to Tony.

It doesn’t really matter one way or the other; either way, the sliver has nested in his chest, getting more possessive and louder by the day, with very little interest in leaving Tony to rejoin the whole Tony had promised it. Is it even a part of Loki, or is it a _new_ Loki brought from another universe?

It give him an idea. Not a good idea, but an idea--because if it works, he won’t have any trouble coaching the little hellspawn to rejoin (or join, if it’s a first) Loki.

No, the hard part is going to be keeping _his_  Loki out of the way.

***

“Tony, what you said the other day—”

Tomorrow, they give this their best shot. All the contingencies for if they fail are in place; all that’s left is to try not to let that happen.

“Forget about it,” Tony says with a grin. “We got outfoxed.”

Loki studies him. Tony refuses to let on that he can feel the moment Loki’s hopes fall.

“Of course,” Loki murmurs.

“Hey, if we could, we would, right?” Tony cups Loki’s neck briefly. “The chips just didn’t fall in our favour this time. That’s all.”

“Of course,” Loki says, and there’s the strain of bitter. “Tell me truly, would you ever desire immortality were the time right?”

He’s expecting an answer-- _no_. Tony wonders, briefly, how many times they’ve come to this intersection, to this possibility of him asking for immortality, for his soul to stay in one place, and how many times it’s been because he had a brush with death and he asked before he’d had a chance to settle.

(How many times before did he not understand?)

“This time I would,” Tony admits quietly, letting his smile drop and searching Loki’s eyes. “So maybe we’ll get another chance. But this one isn’t it, and I don’t want you changing details in the last hour just in case. We can’t risk it. Stick to the plan.”

“Chain the Titan,” Loki intones.

“Exactly.”

***

He’s just going to have to trust Loki will listen.


	36. Part 3 - Chp 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update today, no post tomorrow, make sure you caught both chapters yada yada.
> 
> ALSO
> 
> _**THOR** _
> 
> (i can totally talk about thor and other side things that don't come up in the fic due to this focusing on tony and loki (there's a bit). i'm saving it for a wrap up, with some other implications of what i had/have planned (but won't likely be writing))

As far as final showdowns go, Tony is reasonably sure that it’s epic, even if he hasn’t seen much besides explosions, more explosions, the insides of a space whale (which really, he does _not_ want to repeat), and then lots and lots of organic wiring he wishes he had time to really study in-depth.

The comms are a constant and steady stream of commentary, almost soothing in their terseness and regularity. There’s Loki, making sure that the less suited up and deity members of the strike force don’t suffocate or get an overdose of cosmic radiation with an excellent vantage point and insider knowledge, Steve’s rapid precise orders to adjust as needed, the shorter and less common reports from the rest of the strike force.

For not being nearly so big, they aren’t doing so bad. They may have to do with the handful of missiles Tony donated to the cause for the opening greeting, but that’s not the point. He’s not sure if they can win but at the least aren’t losing without a fight.

“First of three down,” Tony reports and yanks out the glowing core that Loki had shown him. It’s wet and squelches a bit in his hands, just lending a little more theory that the tech here’s all some strange biotech he’d love to study, but there’ll be time and a thousand other alien worlds later.

Hopefully.

***

Getting to the second node isn’t terribly difficult either, even if he has to stop to defend himself from time to time.

The third one is going to be the problem. It’s just along the edge of where the bulk of the battle is going down, not too far from where Thor and crew have engaged Thanos. That’s not the problem--that’s a good thing, that it’s so near Thor and Thanos’ showdown.

(He half wonders how Thor stands a chance if Loki doesn’t, where Thor is getting all that belief from, but now’s not the time because he pretty clearly holding his own against the Titan.)

The trick is going to be that he needs to take the last node out, crippling the neural hivemind the Chitauri have going on (communications, though Loki kept trying to make it sound like more than that), and be in the right place at the right time when-- _if_ \--Thor manages to get those chains on Thanos.

He won’t have long--once Thanos is fully bound, he’s going to get whisked away to where the other Titans have been contained as the chains takes hold. It’s clever, making sure there’s next to no transport time for Thanos to get free.

He’s half hoping Thor might flub and only get it partially done the first try, if only because the window will be a little bigger then.

***

The problem with gods is they don’t particularly _have_ to stick to one form. The problem with _Thor_ is that his apparently crackles with a near blinding amount of lightning, all the electricity of a summer storm focused tightly into one being that looks like it might have wings and _definitely_ has a battle cry that keeps Tony losing focus for the sheer _joy_ of battle it floods his veins with.

It’s also obscuring his view.

He’s nearly chest deep inside the last node, fumbling for the last brainy core to rip out, when he hears a hawk’s high screech, gets a warning bloom of ozone on his tongue and hair standing on end even through the suit, and then there’s chipped rock going everywhere and Tony instinctively ducking his head and contemplating trying to crawl the rest of the way in as Thanos hits the ground _right behind him_.

Instead, he fumbles a bit deeper, hits something distinctly _not_ wire, and yanks before scrambling out and getting farther away. He turns around and freezes.

Thor’s there, landing on the ground not even two or three strides from where Thanos is getting up. His red cape is flowing behind him like so much blood, and he rises from his crouch with the uncanny grace of a mountain lion. Lightning crackles from every inch of him, power rolling off him with every step and a broad smile on his features that’s vicious and hungry in all the ways Tony is so much more used to seeing on Loki’s face--but not the same either, a bloodthirsty promise of breaking bone for no other reason than he _can_.

(And at the same time there is a great hawk, gold and lightning crackling along red dipped wings, there’s a mountain lion stalking forward with a feral grin and blood staining its claws and mouth, forms blending and swirling into each other, and on the ground Thor’s shadow splits into all these and more and there is nothing human in the many headed and many winged beast that stalks his steps, that his form twists in and through, angelic in all its glory and all its horror.)

“Submit,” Thor says, leveling Mjolnir at Thanos with one hand even as the Titan rises again. In his other hand there are chains, silver and gold and starlight, coiling around his forearm like serpents.

Thanos laughs in his face.

It breaks whatever spell that has Tony frozen in place. He scrambles back and away--but not _too_ far away.

In his ear, the others are utterly silent. Tony glances around, notices that all the Chitauri are on the ground--he’d thought it was the shockwave from when Thanos and Thor first hit the ground, but they aren’t getting back up.

With Thanos hitting the ground by the node—

Thor’s grin widens, he shrugs, and then he slams into Thanos again, a bolt of lightning arcing across the scant steps and a boom of thunder jarring Tony’s bones as the two connect again; it’s all so damn _bright_ that Tony almost misses that moment when Thor catches one of Thanos’ incoming strikes with the chains, yanking his arm wide and headbutting him in the face.

_Now now now_ hisses the godling in Tony’s chest. Tony moves without thinking, close enough so that he’s nearer Thanos, suit starting to pull away just enough that he can grab the arc reactor without thought to yank it out and throw—

“ _Tony_!” Loki screams, and it’s all the warning he gets before Loki is ripping Tony back from following after the reactor in a panicked flail of realization.


	37. Part 3 - Chp 13

“Oh god oh god what the hell—”

“You’re alive, I am going to—”

“ _My reactor_ —”

He needs it--he’s had it for _years_ , it’s practically a fucking _pacemaker_ \--he _needs it back_ , he’s going to die, that’s what he’s trying _not_ to do, what the _hell_ was he thinking, why did he—

There’s an inhuman shriek, a blaze of green fire and a roil of _void_ from between Thor and Thanos. Thor and Thanos fall apart, Thor’s light rapidly dimming and form coalescing to only Thor the human-looking.

“What did you _do_?” Loki whispers, staring at where the void is already beginning to coalesce, the same infinitely massive coils and twisting many-headed shadow beast that Tony met inside the Tesseract. The heads are assessing, looking around, some focusing on Thor, the rest on Thanos, and they seem torn on which way to go, a threatened snarl in the air even as the other heads begin to rear up to lunge at Thanos.

“Get Thor out of there,” Tony says weakly, leaning more and more on Loki for support. “I need my reactor, _fuck_ —”

Loki looks at him, tenses, then starts swearing in a language Tony doesn’t know, letting Tony drop to the ground to dive forward.

Tony slumps to the ground, a little grateful if he’s honest. He doesn’t feel well, but then Loki and Thor are both there, Thor looking pissed as hell--but the distance from the Tesseract shard of Loki seems to have helped it make up its mind. Tony can’t see what’s happening, just can hear Thanos cursing and growling, see a sudden flash of colour between coils every now and then as he almost manages--and doesn’t that bode ill.

There’s a satisfying snick as Loki manages to get everything reconnected again and Tony heaves a sigh of relief right in his worried face.

“What is that?” Loki demands.

“You,” Tony says. “Don’t you recognize yourself?”

“That is not me,” Loki says. “I am yet whole.”

“Well fuck,” Tony says, looking past Loki to where the heads have merged into a larger one, mouth stretched wide as it swallows Thanos whole.

***

“I thought it was you!” Tony says. “How the hell do you think I got back? I asked you!”

“Do you just go up to _every_ void horror and assume it’s me?”

“It is you, the eyes are right—”

“Friends,” Thor says, tight and strained.

“ _What_?” they say in unison, looking at Thor.

Thor nods.

They turn. The void thing is settling its coils and already Tony can see that it’s changing in new ways; there are stars and galaxies starting to shimmer across its form like scales, a chill aura that’s frosting the ground beneath it. It’s familiar, so familiar, like Tony knows this form, has seen it before in a dozens different lives.

“It’s you,” Tony says again, certain, all the heat of argument gone.

Thor and Loki exchange glances.

“In the Tesseract, it kept chasing after me. I figured you’d just paid part of yourself to get us out, or left some of yourself behind. That maybe the Tesseract had started to catalogue what you had left.”

It starts to slink closer, familiar green eyes fixated on Tony. Next to him, Loki growls, steps closer so that his shoulder bumps against Tony’s, standing just barely ahead of him.

“Loki,” Tony says quietly, “sit tight for a second. I’ve got this. It won’t hurt me”

Loki gives him an incredulous look, protest and more behind it, but Tony just steps past him and waves at the looming monstrosity as he steps out of his armour.

The returning hum could only be called _pleased_.

“See?” Tony says, more for Loki’s benefit. “I guess I just create you no matter what universe I’m in, if there’s any possibility of it. I needed you to get me out, you know? So you showed up.”

One of the heads nudges Tony, nearly knocking him over. He can feel Loki tense behind him, but he’s also not outright springing to attack--just coiled for it.

“Even?” Tony asks the void Loki.

Another hum.

“Great. Now go home--not me this time. Actually where you belong.”

It eyes Loki, as if it doesn’t quite trust Tony that it does, in fact, belong with the much smaller godling.

“If it was created in another universe,” Thor says, “then it no more belongs to this Loki than it does to this universe.”

“Yeah, well I’m not sending it back to the Tesseract,” Tony snaps. “Loki’s Loki.” He glances back at his own. “Right?”

The two Lokis size each other up. It’s not hard to sense which is the stronger of the two, not now--the void Loki is still digesting Thanos but rapidly growing to be a Presence in a way that even a fully pissed off and worshiped here Loki is. Tony probably should have thought about that.

“In theory,” Loki finally says, eyes still narrowed suspiciously.

“Loki takes care of Loki,” Thor says quietly with a sidelong glance at his brother. “Tony, what you propose would make him far more than he is now. There are—”

“--consequences, yeah, I know. And prices.” He looks at Loki. “Remember what we talked about?”

“If you change your mind, I will devour you,” Loki says, entirely serious, but he’s stepping forward next to Tony. “How do you propose to do this, then?”

He’s talking to the void Loki. Tony hesitates a second, then backs up as a coil shoves him out of the way, returning to stand by Thor.

“This is not wise,” Thor rumbles, arms crossed over his chest.

“Is that a trait we’re supposed to have?”

Thor shakes his head. There’s still anger, but beneath there’s so much disappointment that Tony's glad he’s not the one bearing the weight.

For a long moment, it doesn’t look like anything is happening, and then there’s a slight change in pressure and the void creature is gone except for a pale white-green nimbus around Loki that quickly vanishes. Loki stands still, sways on his feet with his head bowed. Thor and Tony exchange glances, both starting to head towards him just before Loki throws his head back and _laughs_. His skin is rippling, _changing_ , blue sweeping over it as ice crackles over the ground beneath his feet, the shadows in his form shifting like light over water with glimpses of elseways in them, and beneath him his shadow is twisting, changing, flashing so quickly between forms that Tony can’t follow them all, only feel the raw power hit him like a breaking wave as Loki laughs and laughs and _laughs_.

He turns.

There are horns, wicked multilayered things that rise a few inches from his head, strange white-blue lines that trace patterns over his face. His eyes are molten red with green gleaming in the depths, a heated core that promises more than the destruction and cold death in the void that the rest of him so embodies. His eyes latch onto Tony and Tony stops breathing--not from fear, but _rightness_.

This-- _this_ is Loki as he should be, Loki as he is meant to be. For a shining moment, there’s no hunger in Tony, only certainty--there is _nothing_ they cannot shape between the two of them, not when Loki is like this. Tony greedily takes him in, all of him, stepping towards him with hands that itch to touch, to trace the lines that promise an architecture and plan that the rest of the universe will always be too slow to realize, to taste him, this this _this_ —

“ _Tony_ ,” Loki says, but it’s too small, too narrow to possibly at all contain what he does--Loki says his name like a hymn, a promise, a benediction, says it as if he is passing commandments from on high. Says it and makes it fundamental law—” _Beloved_.”

Tony kisses him before Loki says anything else and reduces him to utter incoherence. It’s touching a live wire, Loki too hot and too cold at once, a jolt that tears through Tony from head to toe, pure exaltation, and he’s babbling Loki’s name, grabbing fistfuls of his hair and trying to map his mouth and too sharp teeth, like maybe if he presses hard enough they’ll be one soul like they were, once, before.

“Tony,” Loki sighs, eyes half closing.


	38. Part 3 - Chp 14

They go back to Earth, not by contacting Jane again as planned but via Loki. He snaps his fingers and everyone is arrayed back in the desert, no step between along the way.

Tony grabs onto Loki for balance at the shift and pressure of a proper atmosphere, laughing.

“Could you have done that before?” he asks.

“No.” Loki grins at him, eyes sparkling. Tony thinks he can catch sight of stars in them--forming, expanding, collapsing--but then Loki leans in and nips at his bottom lip and he leans into that, instead, unable to help chuckling. He can’t keep his hands away, wants to map all the changes newly written into Loki’s skin.

“Tony, Loki,” someone says, Steve says, a little awkward, but to be fair he’s got his tongue halfway down Loki’s throat. “We need to—”

Loki waves his hand without even breaking the kiss. Moments later, the back of Tony’s knees hit what feels like a bed; pulling back for air, yes, that is in fact a bed.

“That might have been important,” Tony points out, letting himself fall backwards onto the bed. Loki follows after him-- _prowls_ after him, predator gleam in his eye and a smirk on his lips, flick of a blue-black tongue over his teeth.

“No.” Loki tears Tony’s clothing, starts with his shirt and runs his hands down Tony’s sides, black tipped nails scratching lightly. Tony props himself up to watch, shuddering as Loki traces over Tony’s skin with his mouth, nips of his teeth, reminded of—”Nothing is more important than this.” Loki hums into his skin, then glances up, a glimmer of red through thick lashes, and he purrs, “ _Tony_.”

“Fuck.” Tony lets himself fall back, hands trying to grab Loki and getting pinned in the process.

“Allow me,” Loki says, free hand running up the inside of Tony’s still _horribly_ clothed thigh, noses along Tony’s quickly growing erection. “ _Tony_.”

***

Loki’s talking, hasn’t stopped talking, and Tony can’t even process what he’s saying--it’s all so much delirium, a pleasure soaked haze--but he knows the words are directed at him, that words are power, the _intent_ , the—

He slurs something, he doesn’t know what, and Loki shushes him, whispers into his hip, and Tony’s arching, just like that, trying to get purchase on the sheets as Loki chuckles, and that’s possibly _worse_ , orgasm hitting him so hard he can’t see, just feels Loki swallowing him down, stroking his belly as he comes down. Tony gets a glimpse of that tongue again, Loki watching him, so gentle as to be cruel as Tony’s shivers, over-sensitive and dazed and heady on on—

(“ _Is this not a just reward, beloved? To feel as a god?_ ”)

\-- _worship_.

Time doesn’t seem to matter. He wakes and sleeps all to the hum of _holy-holy-holy_ that Loki breathes into him, cries under the weight of it even as he begs Loki not to stop, swears and babbles, and Loki laughs, sweet and glorious and—

***

There’s fruit at Tony’s lips, a slice of something, an apple, he doesn’t know, just the taste of the juice has him famished, opening his mouth and licking after Loki’s fingers, eager for more.

He feels _clean_ , hollow and holy, when Loki starts again.

***

He wakes up in a nest of blankets, Loki’s breath tickling the back of his neck, encircled in his arms. He feels… amazing, loose-limbed and relaxed. He stretches, vaguely wondering what day it is; Loki snorts as he wakes. Tony rolls over to look at him and Loki gives a small smile, a hand possessively resting on Tony’s neck as soon as he’s turned around.

“We should probably go back,” Tony says.

Loki shrugs with one shoulder, lithe and beautiful; maybe they could stay a little longer.

“How do you feel?” Loki asks.

“Great.” Tony pauses, but despite the bites he distinctly remembers, he’s not sore in the least bit. “Really great.”

Loki smiles a cat’s smile; Tony can’t resist leaning forward to kiss it off him, hands greedily sliding to trace the lines that apparently run all over, raised under his fingers.

He’s grinding against Loki’s own erection when Loki stops him for a moment.

“Should we not go back?” he asks, innocent, biting his lip and lowering his lashes.

“Fuck ‘em.”

***

They do go back. Eventually.


	39. Part 3 - Chp 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all she wrote. 
> 
> Chapter 40 is a quick overview of some things that didn't make it in for those interested. It's not too long and I hope you like it if you read it. You can totally disregard it too.
> 
> Thanks for reading, let me know what you thought, and see you next time!

“ _Three days_ , Tony,” Steve says, extra emphasis, like if he just repeats it enough Tony will get it. Loki, the traitor, has left him to deal with Steve on his own; on the other hand, he’s pretty sure Thor saw them get back. Honestly, Tony would rather deal with Steve now than Thor considering what all happened.

“Yeah, so? It was fine. Everything’s fine.”

Steve sighs with one of his most pained eagle looks yet. Tony just shrugs; he still feels amazing, and there’s very little Steve can do to change that. Loki had said there wasn’t anything else more important, and really, Tony’s inclined to believe him if only because he hasn’t had to deal with any debriefing.

“We won,” Tony says. “What more do you want?”

“I know we won. I want to know what happened. Everything went to hell in the last ten minutes and Loki blew out the comms screeching when he thought you’d gotten hit.”

“Oh. Well why didn’t you say so?”

***

He finds Loki and Thor talking. Thor has intent look on his face; Loki looks impassive, but Tony knows he’s irritated if only because it’s humming under his own skin despite his own good mood. It’s not _murder_ though, so Tony isn’t worried.

Tony strolls up and hip checks Loki when Thor stops talking for a moment; he doesn’t want to get involved with their drama, not really. If it’s anything Tony needs to know, Loki will tell him later. Loki doesn’t budge, just shifts so Tony can stand in his space without taking his eyes off Thor.

“Hey, Fabio,” Tony says.

Thor stops staring at Loki for a second to glance at Tony, then jerks his head to look back at Tony again so hard Tony’s neck winces in sympathy pain. Thor looks absolutely thunderstruck, quickly looking at Loki again, mouth parted just slightly.

“Brother, what did you _do_?”

Loki shrugs.

“I didn’t _hurt_ anyone.”

“That is not the—”

“Who would stop me? You were here, Mother rules in Odin’s place, and Odin is in one of his famous slumbers.” Loki smirks at Thor. “Idunn? I’ve tricked her before.”

“It is forbidden, Loki! You cannot just do as you will now! There are responsibilities that come with the power you wield, there are reasons for this law and you cannot just throw them aside!”

“And they matter not at all when I have made an oath.”

That shuts Thor up for a moment, a vein visibly pulsing in his temple.

“We will have _words_ about this, Loki,” Thor snaps for before stalking off.

“What was all that about?”

Loki looks at him sideways, smirk blooming to full smile, knife-sharp and gleeful.

“He’s only sore what I fed you during our retreat.”

Tony blinks and tries to remember what he ate. Just apples, really--that’s the only thing he really remembers, the most amazing apples he’s ever had in his—

“Oh.” Tony blinks, then starts to laugh. “I thought that was going to take longer.”

“Three days and three nights. I thought it fitting we spend the time well, to distract you from any discomfort you might feel. I hear that shedding mortality can be painful.”

Tony leans up to snag a kiss, wrapping an arm around Loki’s waist when he pulls away.

“So what’s next on the agenda?”

Loki tilts his head back to study the lights, cocking his head--just a little, Tony thinks, like a magpie.

“I do believe you said you wished to fix this planet instead of let it destroy itself. Or the Tesseract, which needs finding before anyone else stumbles upon it. Pity that would be.”

“Whatever sounds good,” Tony says.

After all, they have all the time in the universe--right up until it ends.

He’ll make sure of it.


	40. Chapter 40

And that's a wrap. This chapter is nothing but some added information about what I imagined happened next and some other stuff I didn't find a way to work in.

**Thor and Jane** are not soulmates. That was pretty obvious in the fic.  **Thor's soulmate**  doesn't really ever manifest as a person anymore--Thor's soulmate and Thor are the ones who made it possible for  _everyone_ to have a soulmate. It's why Thor's considered the god of soulmates (even if few people remember why), why Thor does so well despite not really being actively worshipped--he's powered mostly by the concept of soulmates. 

He's basically Loki's opposite in a lot of ways. 

**Jane's soulmate** is  **Sif**. They haven't met at the time of this story, but they will. It meant a lot to me, to have these two beings who are used to going into spaces where they aren't accepted (a woman in STEM, a woman as a warrior) and kick face. They're  _victory_ , defiance in the face of odds. They balance each other out, the mental and the physical, and they're braver than anyone ever remembers to give them credit for. Remember that they're  _victory_ , because at the End of All Things, when Jane falls, Sif falls--and so falls  _victory,_ clear and clean and perfect victory.

(Ragnarok is not a clean victory for anyone)

**Jormungandr** is the only one who can poison the soulmate concept that powers Thor, and it's not a mistake Jormungandr is born of Loki--Loki's cynicism and bitterness have always been what Thor is up against in this universe. Jormugandr is Loki's physics and rules given form without remorse. Thor and Jormungandr clash in the physical, and it happens in the minds--because the gods are ideas after all--with the spread and dismantling of soulmates as a concept. The death of a fantasy given life.

Thor stops Jormungandr, but it undoes him too. That's the beginning of the end, of everything undoing. Without Thor to balance Loki out, all of Thor's fire and life and light is gone and Loki is free to consume as his hunger always compels him to without any restraint at all. 

Those times, when Thor dies before Loki, the Ragnarok cycle ends in darkness and  _nothingness_  centered on one last star blue glow ( _Tony_ ) before that, too, winks out--a sigh and a tired chuckle and finally finally  _rest_  found in a lovers arms with a whisper of  _beloved_  the seed of the next world tree.

And like Thor implied, sometimes Loki dies before Thor--those times end in light and thunderstorms and  _heat_ , high summer heat and  _laughter_ , the churn of the battlefield, one last crowd-wide roar of  _exhilaration_ and  _joy_  and  _love_  before it all combusts and begins again. 

And the reason that  **Tony** **'s immortality**  matters, is it's the very first hint of the beginning of the end. Loki being tied to one person who lives and dies and reincarnates is part of what keeps Loki in check. It's as much a part of him as Thor being bound to humanity as a whole is (and another way in which they are opposites that balance each other). Tony taking immortality is him refusing to risk Loki dying, is him beginning to work with Loki. It's why so much of this story focusing on  _how Tony changes._ I don't think canon Tony would take immortality--not even prior IM3--so this fic was born of trying to suss that question out. What would change him so that he would actually take immortality? 

This is not a nice Tony. He's very much based on/inspired by the Tony [in another country (people die)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/413357) by pprfaith, and there's some pretty direct nods to that early on with Tony having a network in place to shut things down. This is Tony who walks away from events because he's decided no one else can fix it because they just don't  _listen_.

You can, of course, ignore all this. But while the ending  _is_ happy in the sense that Loki and Tony are together, that Tony's not immortal and free of the risk of dying and his soul being destroyed (or more free of it), it kind of is a bit dark too, because it's what leads us to Ragnarok.

But then, I suppose, the other thing worth remembering is no matter who 'triumphs', no matter whether it's Thor who wins or Loki, the last breath of the universe, and the first breath, is always, always  _love_. 

And that's pretty alright.

**Thank you** for the ride. I've had a lovely time posting this, hearing what people liked, seeing the reactions. I didn't expect a ton of people to go for this smashup of two of my favourite tropes. I didn't see myself ever writing a soulmate au. I'm so glad you liked it, and if there's any niggling thing you're wondering, let me know in the comments. One last reminder that you can check out [the tumblr](http://sayingyournamesin.tumblr.com/) to see the various images, sounds, edits, and other fics that inspired and influenced this fic while I was working on it. Thanks again to  **wrecked anon, seizure7,** and  **verbyna** for encouraging this crazy little idea until I had it written. 

Till next time~~ <3

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to both seizure7 and Verbyna for their delight with the previews I sent them. 
> 
> While not mentioned directly, this fic wouldn't exist if not for [wrecked-anon](http://wrecked-anon.tumblr.com/). She happened to reblog [two](http://www.asofterworld.com/clean/suspension.jpg) [things](http://wrecked-anon.tumblr.com/post/84056874285/loki-by-mr-zombie) that caught my brain on fire and next thing you know here we are. 
> 
> The entire fic is written and edited at this point; I'm planning to do a chapter every day I've got internet (which, with traveling, is uncertain sometimes).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Ten of Swords and The Fool](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4208349) by [Doodsxd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doodsxd/pseuds/Doodsxd)




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